Forerunner - Volume 1

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Title: The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910)

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Release Date: January, 2002 [Etext #3017]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]

Edition: 10

Language: English

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Forerunner (vol. 1) by C. P. Gilman
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THE FORERUNNER, A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

by

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

VOLUME ONE, November 1909-December 1910 (14 issues)

CONTENTS

Volume 1 No. 1
November 1909

Then This (poem)
A Small God And a Large Goddess (essay)
Arrears (poem)
Three Thanksgivings (story)
How Doth The Hat (poem)
Introducing the World, the Flesh And the Devil (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Where the Heart Is (sketch)
Thanksgiving (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment And Review
Personal Problems
Thanksong (poem)
Advertisements: Lowney's, Fels-Naptha Soap, Holeproof Hoisery, Moore's Fountain Pen, The Forerunner, A Toilet Preparation, Calendula

Volume 1 No. 2
December 1909

Love (poem)
According To Solomon (story)
An Obvious Blessing (essay)
Steps (poem)
Why We Honestly Fear Socialism (essay)
Child Labor (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Poor Relation (sketch)
His Crutches (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment And Review
Personal Problems
Get Your Work Done (poem)
Advertisements: Lowney's, Soapine, Woman's Era, The Forerunner, Calendula

Volume 1 No. 3
January 1910

A Central Sun, a song (poem)
Reasonable Resolutions (essay)
Her Housekeeper (story)
Locked Inside (poem)
Private Morality And Pulic Immorality (essay)
"With God Above" (poem)
The Humanness Of Women (essay)
Here Is The Earth (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The "Anti" And The Fly (poem)
The Barrel (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: The Melancholy Rabbit (poem)
Advertisements: The Forerunner, Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising, Things we wish to Advertise, Calendula

Volume 1 No. 4
February 1910

Two Prayers (poem)
An Offender (story)
Before Warm February Winds (poem)
Kitchen-Mindedness (esssay)
Two Storks (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Little Leafy Brothers (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: A Walk Walk Walk (poem)
Ode To a Fool (poem)

Volume 1 No. 5
March 1910

The Sands (poem)
A Middle-Sized Artist (story)
The Minor Birds (poem)
Parlor-Mindedness (essay)
Naughty (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Erratum
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Water-Lure (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: Aunt Eliza (poem)
The Cripple (poem)

Volume 1 No. 6
April 1910

When Thou Gainest Happiness (poem)
Martha's Mother (story)
For Fear (poem)
Nursery-Mindedness (essay)
A Village Of Fools (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
"I gave myself to God" (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
His Agony (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisements: The Forerunner, A Summer Cottage

Volume 1 No. 7
May 1910

Brain Service (poem)
When I Was A Witch (story)
Quotation: Eugene Wood
Believing And Knowing (essay)
The Kingdom (poem)
Heaven Forbid! (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The House of Apples (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Suffrage (editorial)
Advertisements: The Forerunner, A Summer Cottage

Volume 1 No. 8
June 1910

The Puritan (poem)
Making a Living (story)
Ten Suggestions (essay)
The Malingerer (poem)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal, part I (essay)
Prisoners (sketch)
May Leaves (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Room At The Top (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisement: The Forerunner

Volume 1 No. 9
July 1910

The Bawling World (poem)
A Coincidence (story)
Shares (poem)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal, part II (essay)
Improved Methods of Habit Culture (essay)
O Faithful Clay! (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
We Eat At Home (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Only an Hour (sketch)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Forerunner

Volume 1 No. 10
August 1910

The Earth's Entail (poem)
The Cottagette (story)
Wholesale Hypnotism (essay)
"Sit up and think!" (poem)
The Kitchen Fly (essay)
Alas! (poem)
Her Pets (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
"The Outer Reef!" (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
The Editor's Problem (editorial)
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Forerunner

Volume 1 No. 11
September 1910

To-morrow Night (poem)
Mr. Robert Grey Sr. (story)
What Virtues Are Made Of (essay)
Animals In Cities (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Waiting-Room (poem)
While the King Slept (sketch)
The Housewife (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Beauty Women Have Lost (essay)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
The Editor's Problem (editorial)
From Letters Of Subscribers
Advertisements: Some Of Our Exchanges, Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Forerunner

Volume 1 No. 12
October 1910

Only Mine (poem)
The Boys and the Butter (story)
A Question (poem)
Is It Wrong To Take Life? (essay)
The World and the Three Artists (sketch)
In How Little Time (poem)
Woman and the State (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Socialist and the Suffragist (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (editorial)
To Those Specially Interested... (editorial)
If You Renew (editorial)
If You Discontinue (editorial)
Advertisements: The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges, Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux

Volume 1 No. 13
November 1910

Worship (poem)
My Astonishing Dodo (story)
Why Texts? (essay)
The Little White Animals (poem)
Women Teachers, Married and Unmarried (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Good Man (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
A Frequent Question (sketch)
Boys Will Be Boys (poem)
Many Windows (poem)
Comment and Review
From Letters Of Subscribers
A Friendly Response (editorial)
Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (editorial)
To Those Specially Interested... (editorial)
If You Renew (editorial)
If You Discontinue (editorial)
Advertisements: The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges, Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux

Volume 1 No. 14
December 1910

In As Much (poem)
A Word In Season (story)
Christmas Love (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Our Overworked Instincts (essay)
Love's Highest (poem)
The Permanent Child (sketch)
The New Motherhood (essay)
How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money (essay)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Nun In The Kitchen (essay)
Letters From Subscribers (editorial)
Comment and Review
Advertisements: Success Magazine, The Co-Operative Press, Woman and Socialism, The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges
From Letters of Forerunner Subscribers
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux

INDEX

SERIALS AND COLUMNS

Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man-Made World, non-fiction (1:1 - 1:14)
What Diantha Did, novel (1:1 - 1:14)
Comment and Review (1:1 - 1:14)
Personal Problems (1:1 - 1:12)
Play-Time (1:3 - 1:5)

STORIES

According To Solomon (1:2)
The Boys and the Butter (1:12)
A Coincidence (1:9)
The Cottagette (1:10)
Her Housekeeper (1:3)
Making a Living (1:8)
Martha's Mother (1:6)
A Middle-Sized Artist (1:5)
Mr. Robert Grey Sr. (1:11)
My Astonishing Dodo (1:13)
An Offender (1:4)
Three Thanksgivings (1:1)
When I Was A Witch (1:7)
A Word In Season (1:14)

ESSAYS AND SKETCHES

Animals In Cities (1:11)
The Barrel (1:3)
The Beauty Women Have Lost (1:11)
Believing And Knowing (1:7)
Christmas Love (1:14)
A Frequent Question (1:13)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal (1:8, 1:9)
The Good Man (1:13)
Her Pets (1:10)
The House of Apples (1:7)
How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money (1:14)
The Humanness Of Women (1:3)
Improved Methods of Habit Culture (1:9)
Introducing the World, the Flesh And the Devil (1:1)
Is It Wrong To Take Life? (1:12)
The Kitchen Fly (1:10)
Kitchen-Mindedness (1:4)
Naughty (1:5)
The New Motherhood (1:14)
The Nun In The Kitchen (1:14)
Nursery-Mindedness (1:6)
An Obvious Blessing (1:2)
Only an Hour (1:9)
Our Overworked Instincts (1:14)
Parlor-Mindedness (1:5)
The Permanent Child (1:14)
The Poor Relation (1:2)
Prisoners (1:8)
Private Morality And Pulic Immorality (1:3)
Reasonable Resolutions (1:3)
A Small God And a Large Goddess (1:1)
Ten Suggestions (1:8)
A Village Of Fools (1:6)
What Virtues Are Made Of (1:11)
Where the Heart Is (1:1)
Wholesale Hypnotism (1:10)
While the King Slept (1:11)
Why Texts? (1:13)
Why We Honestly Fear Socialism (1:2)
Woman and the State (1:12)
Women Teachers, Married and Unmarried (1:13)
The World and the Three Artists (1:12)

POEMS

Alas! (1:10)
The "Anti" And The Fly (1:3)
Arrears (1:1)
Aunt Eliza (1:5)
The Bawling World, a sestina (1:9)
Before Warm February Winds (1:4)
Boys Will Be Boys (1:13)
Brain Service (1:7)
A Central Sun, a song (1:3)
Child Labor (1:2)
The Cripple (1:5)
The Earth's Entail (1:10)
For Fear (1:6)
Get Your Work Done (1:2)
Heaven Forbid! (1:7)
His Agony (1:6)
His Crutches (1:2)
Here Is The Earth (1:3)
The Housewife (1:11)
How Doth The Hat (1:1)
"I gave myself to God" (1:6)
In As Much (1:14)
In How Little Time (1:12)
The Kingdom (1:7)
Little Leafy Brothers (1:4)
The Little White Animals (1:13)
Locked Inside (1:3)
Love (1:2)
Love's Highest (1:14)
The Malingerer (1:8)
Many Windows (1:13)
May Leaves (1:8)
The Melancholy Rabbit (1:3)
The Minor Birds (1:5)
O Faithful Clay! (1:9)
Ode To a Fool (1:4)
Only Mine (1:12)
"The Outer Reef!" (1:10)
Play-Time: Aunt Eliza (1:5)
Play-Time: The Melancholy Rabbit (1:3)
Play-Time: A Walk Walk Walk (1:4)
The Puritan (1:8)
A Question (1:12)
The Room At The Top (1:8)
The Sands (1:5)
Shares (1:9)
"Sit up and think!" (1:10)
The Socialist and the Suffragist (1:12)
Steps (1:2)
Thanksgiving (1:1)
Thanksong (1:1)
Then This (1:1)
To-morrow Night (1:11)
Two Prayers (1:4)
The Waiting-Room (1:11)
A Walk Walk Walk (1:5)
Water-Lure (1:5)
We Eat At Home (1:9)
When Thou Gainest Happiness (1:6)
"With God Above" (1:3)
Worship (1:13)

ADVERTISEMENTS AND MISC.

Editorial: The Editor's Problem (1:10, 1:11)
Editorial: A Friendly Response (1:13)
Editorial: If You Discontinue (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: If You Renew (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: Letters From Subscribers (1:14)
Editorial: Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: Suffrage (1:7)
Editorial: To Those Specially Interested... (1:12, 1:13)
Erratum (1:5)
From Letters Of Subscribers (1:11, 1:13, 1:14)
Masthead tags (1:1, 1:3 - 1:7)
Quotation: Eugene Wood (1:7)
Advertisement: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1:9 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Calendula (1:1 - 1:3)
Advertisement: Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising (1:3)
Advertisement: The Co-Operative Press (1:14)
Advertisement: The Crux (1:12 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Fels-Naptha Soap (1:1)
Advertisement: The Forerunner (1:1 - 1:3, 1:6 - 1:11)
Advertisement: Holeproof Hoisery (1:1)
Advertisement: Lowney's (1:1: 1:2)
Advertisement: Moore's Fountain Pen (1:1)
Advertisement: Soapine (1:2)
Advertisement: Some Of Our Exchanges (1:11 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Success Magazine (1:14)
Advertisement: A Summer Cottage (1:6, 1:7)
Advertisement: Things we wish to Advertise (1:3)
Advertisement: A Toilet Preparation (1:1)
Advertisement: Woman's Era (1:2)
Advertisement: Woman and Socialism (1:14)
Advertisement: The Woman's Journal (1:12 - 1:14)

WORKS REVIEWED

"The American Magazine", illustrations (1:1)
Jessie H. Childs, "The Sea of Matrimony" (1:3)
Stanton Coit, "Woman in Church and State" (1:9)
"The Common Cause," magazine (1:11)
Lavinia L. Dock, "Hygiene and Morality" (1:13)
"The Englishwoman," magazine (1:10)
"The Ethical World", magazine (1:9)
Cicely Hamilton, "Marriage as a Trade" (1:13)
Alexander Irvine, "From The Bottom Up" (1:11)
Mary Jonston, "The Wise Housekeeper" (1:13)
Ellen Key, "The Century of the Child" (1:14)
Ingraham Lovell, "Margharita's Soul" (1:2)
"Philemon's Verses" (author unknown) (1:5)
Sarah Harvey Porter, "The Life and Times of Anne Royall" (1:2)
"The Progressive Woman," magazine (1:11)
Gerald Stanley Lee, "Inspired Millionaires" (1:7)
Prince Morrow, "Social Diseases and Marriage" (1:6)
Meredith Nicholson, "The Lords of High Decision" (1:5)
William Robinson, "Never Told Tales" (1:6)
Thomas W. Salmon, "Two Preventable Causes of Insanity" (1:10)
Nancy Musselman Schoonmaker, "The Eternal Fires" (1:9)
Molly Elliot Sewell, "The Ladies' Battle" (1:14)
Ida Tarbell, "The American Woman" (1:8)
"To-day's Problems," various authors (1:13)
"The Union Labor Advocate," magazine (1:11)
"Votes for Women," magazine (1:11)
Lester F. Ward, "Pure Sociology" (1:12)
H. G. Wells, "Ann Veronica" (1:3)
Harvey White, "A Ship Of Souls" (1:12)
"The Woman's Journal" (1:3, 1:10)

THE FORERUNNER, VOLUME ONE

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
OWNER AND PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 1
NOVEMBER, 1909
The Charlton Company, 67 Wall Street, New York
Copyright for 1909, C. P. Gilman

Said the New Minister: "I shall not give you a text this morning. If
you listen closely, you will discover what the sermon is about by what I
say."

THEN THIS

The news-stands bloom with magazines,
They flame, they blaze indeed;
So bright the cover-colors glow,
So clear the startling stories show,
So vivid their pictorial scenes,
That he who runs may read.

Then This: It strives in prose and verse,
Thought, fancy, fact and fun,
To tell the things we ought to know,
To point the way we ought to go,
So audibly to bless and curse,
That he who reads may run.

A SMALL GOD AND A LARGE GODDESS

The ancient iconoclast pursued his idol-smashing with an ax. He did not
regard the feelings of the worshippers, and they, with similar
indifference to his, promptly destroyed him.

The modern iconoclast, wiser from long experience, practices the
kindergarten art of substitution; enters without noise, and dexterously
replaces the old image with a new one.

Often the worshippers do not notice the change. They never spend their
time in discriminating study of their idol, being exclusively occupied
in worshipping it.

The task herein undertaken is not so easy. We can hardly expect to
remove the particular pet deity of millions of people for thousands of
years--an especially conspicuous little image at that, differing from
other gods and goddesses; and substitute another figure, three times his
size, of the opposite sex, and thirty years older--without somebody's
noticing it.

Yet this is precisely what is required of us, by the new knowledge of
to-day. We are called upon to dislodge what is easily the most popular
god in the calendar, albeit the littlest; that fat fluttering small boy,
congenitally blind, with his haphazard archery playthings; that
undignified conception, type of folly change and irresponsible mischief,
which so amazingly usurps the name and place of love. Never was there a
more absurd misrepresentation.

Suppose we worshipped Fire, the great sun for our over-lord, all lesser
lights in varying majesty, each hearth-fire as the genius and guardian
of the home. So worshipping, suppose we chose, as ever present image of
the great idea, to be pictured and sculptured far and wide, to fill all
literature, to be accepted even by science as type and symbol of the
Fire Divine--a match-box!

So slight, so transient, so comparatively negligible in importance, is
the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of
flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life
and love we ought to worship.

We have taken the assistant for the principal, a tributary for the main
stream; we have exalted Eros, the god of man's desire, and paid no heed
to that great goddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a running
footman.

We are right to worship love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the
love that is gratitude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration,
love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere
desire.

But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical
immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream
unbroken through the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak.

That force is predominant. Under its ceaseless, upward pressure have all
creatures risen from the first beginning. Resistlessly it pushes
through the ages; stronger than pain or fear or anger, stronger than
selfishness or pride, stronger than death. It rises like a mighty tree,
branching and spreading through the changing seasons.

Death gnaws at it in vain. Death destroys the individual, not the race;
death plucks the leaves, the tree lives on. That tree is motherhood.

The life process replaces one generation with another, each equal to,
yes, if possible, superior to, the last. This mighty process has
enlarged and improved throughout the ages, until it has grown from a
mere division of the cell--its first step still--to the whole range of
education by which the generations are replenished socially as well as
physically. From that vague impulse which sets afloat a myriad oyster
germs, to the long patience of a brooding bird; from the sun-warmed eggs
of a reptile to the nursed and guarded young of the higher mammals; so
runs the process and the power through lengthening years of love and
service, lives by service, grows with service. The longer the period of
infancy, the greater the improvement of species.

The fish or insect, rapidly matured, reaches an early limit. He must be
competent to Iive as soon as he begins, and is no more competent at his
early ending. The higher life form, less perfect at beginning, spending
more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power. First
from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is
safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious
care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest. Contrast this
with the floating chances of the spawn!

Then the rich, sure food of mother-milk, the absolute adaptation, the
whole great living creature an alembic to gather from without, and
distil to sweet perfection, what the child needs. Contrast this with
the chances of new-born fish or fly, or even those of the bird baby,
whose mother must search wide for the food she brings. The mammal has
it with her.

Then comes the highest stage of all, where the psychic gain of the race
is transmitted to the child as well as the physical. This last and
noblest step in the life process we call education. education is
differentiated motherhood. It is social motherhood. It is the
application to the replenishment and development of the race of the same
great force of ever-growing life which made the mother's milk.

Here are the three governing laws of life: To Be; To Re-Be; To Be
Better. The life force demands Existence. And we strain every nerve to
keep ourselves alive. The life force demands Reproduction. And our
physical machinery is shifted and rearranged repeatedly, with arrayed
impulses to suit--to keep the race alive. Then, most imperative of all,
the life force demands Improvement. And all creation groaneth and
travaileth in this one vast endeavor. Not merely this
thing--permanently; not merely more of this thing--continuously; but
better things, ever better and better types, has been the demand of life
upon us, and we have fulfilled it.

Under this last and highest law, as the main factor in securing to the
race its due improvement, comes that supreme officer of the life
process, the Mother. Her functions are complex, subtle, powerful, of
measureless value.

Her first duty is to grow nobly for her mighty purpose. Her next is to
select, with inexorable high standard, the fit assistant for her work.
The third--to fitly bear, bring forth, and nurse the child. Following
these, last and highest of all, comes our great race-process of social
parentage, which transmits to each new generation the gathered
knowledge, the accumulated advantages of the past.

When mother and father labor and save for years to give their children
the "advantages" of civilization; when a whole state taxes itself to
teach its children; that is the Life Force even more than the direct
impulse of personal passion. The pressure of progress, the resistless
demand of better conditions for our children, is life's largest
imperative, the fullest expression of motherhood.

But even if we confine ourselves for the time being to the plane of mere
replenishment, to that general law under which animals continue in
existence upon earth, even here the brief period of pre-paternal
excitement is but a passing hour compared to the weeks and months, yes,
years, in the higher species, of maternal service, love and care. The
human father, too, toils for his family; but the love, the power, the
pride of fatherhood are not symbolized by the mischievous butterfly baby
we have elected to worship.

Cupid has nothing to do with either motherhood or fatherhood in the
large human sense. His range is far short of the mark, he suggests
nothing of the great work to which he is but the pleasing preliminary.
Even for marriage we must bring in another god little heard of--Master
Hymen. This personage has made but small impression upon literature and
art; we have concentrated our interest on the God of First Sensation,
leaving none for ultimate results.

It is as if we were impressed by the intricate and indispensible process
of nutrition (upon which, as anyone can see, all life continuously
depends) and then had fixed our attention upon the palate, as chief
functionary. The palate is useful, even necessary. Without that eager
guide and servant we might be indifferent to the duty of eating, or
might eat what was useless or injurious, or at best eat mechanically and
without pleasure.

In the admirable economy of nature we are led to perform necessary acts
by the pleasure which accompanies them; so the "pleasures of the palate"
rightly precede the uses of the stomach; but we should not mistake them
for the chief end. In point of fact, this is precisely what we have
done. It not an analogy, it is a real truth. In nutrition as in
reproduction we have been quite taken up with accompaniments and
assistants, and have ignored the real business in hand. That is why the
whole world is so unwisely fed. It considers only the taste of things,
the pleasure of eating them, and ignores the real necessities of the
process.

And why, if this standard of doorstep satisfaction does not really
measure values in food, should we continue to set the same standard for
the mighty work of love? Love is mighty, but little Master Cupid is not
Love. The love that warms and lights and builds the world is
Motherlove. It is aided and paralleled by Fatherlove (that new
development distinctive of our race, that ennobling of the father by his
taking up so large a share of what was once all motherwork).

But why, so recognizing and reverencing this august Power, why should we
any longer be content to accept as its symbol this godlet of transient
sensation? No man who has ever loved a woman fully, as only human
beings can love, through years of mutual care and labor, through
sickness, age, and death, can honestly accept, as type of that long,
strong, enduring Love, this small blind fly-by-night.

There is, unquestionably, a stage of feeling which he fitly represents.
There is an inflammable emotionality in youth and its dreary continuance
into middle life, when as the farcial old governor in the play exclaims,
"Every day is ladies' day to me." Such a state of mind--or body,
rather--is common enough, harmless enough, perhaps, for a few light,
ineffectual years; but it is a poor compliment to call it Love, to let
this state of shuffling indecision, this weather-cock period, this
blindfold chance-shot game of hit or miss, hold such high place in our
hearts.

The explanation of it all is plain. In those slow, ignorant ages when
the spark of life was supposed to be transmitted by the male, he
naturally was taken to typify the life force. As this force was most
imperious in youth, so youth was taken to represent it. And as, even in
the eyes of the supposed chief actor, his feelings were changeable and
fleeting and his behavior erratic and foolish in the extreme--therefore
Cupid!

Therefore, seeing the continuous unreason of the love-driven male, we
say, "Love is blind"; seeing his light-mindedness, we say, "Love has
wings"; seeing his evident lack of intelligence and purpose, we make him
a mere child; seeing the evil results of his wide license, we
euphemistically indicate some pain by that bunch of baby arrows.

It is easy to see the origin of this deification of the doorstep. It is
not so easy to justify its persistence now that long years of knowledge
show us the great Door.

The Door of Life is Motherhood. She is the gate of entrance. Her work
is the great work as moulder and builder. She carries in her the Life
Power which this absurd infant is supposed to typify; and her love is
greater than his, even as a wise, strong mother is greater than a little
child.

Consider the imperative law that demands motherhood, that gives
motherhood, that holds motherhood to its great continuing task; where
short pleasure is followed by long discomfort crowned with pain; where
even the rich achievement of new-made life is but the beginning of years
of labor and care. Here is the life force. Here is power and passion.
Not the irritable, transient impulse, however mighty, but the staying
power, the passion that endures, the spirit which masters weakness,
slays selfishness, holds its ministrant to a lifelong task.

This is not appetite, hunger, desire. Desire may lead to it, and
usefully. Desire is the torchbearer, Motherhood is the Way.

Give Baby Love his due. He is not evil; he is good. He is a joy
forever. He is vitally necessary in the scheme of things. Happy are
they who in the real great work of life can carry with them this angel
visitant, fluttering free along their path, now close and sweet, now
smiling mischievously at a distance, yet returning ever.

But with all that can be said of him he is out of place as chief deity
in this high temple. Let a little shrine be made at the gate outside
the door. Let him smile there and take his tribute of red roses. But
when we put the shoes from off our feet and enter, we should see before
us, tall and grave, glorious in strong beauty, majestic in her amplitude
of power, the Goddess Motherhood.

Such love should shine from her deep eyes that children would crowd to
that temple and feel at home; learning to understand a little of what
had brought them there. Such beauty in this body of great womanhood that
men would worship as for long they have worshipped her of Melos. Such
high pride that girls, gazing, would feel strong to meet and bear their
splendid task. And such power--such living, overmastering power that
man, woman and child alike should bow in honor and rise in strength.

Then will Love be truly worshipped.

ARREARS

Our gratitude goes up in smoke,
In incense smoke of prayer;
We thank the Underlying Love,
The Overarching Care--
We do not thank the living men
Who make our lives so fair.

For long insolvent centuries
We have been clothed and fed,
By the spared captive, spared for once,
By inches slain instead;
He gave his service and is gone;
Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.

His labor built the world we love;
Our highest flights to-day
Rest on the service of the past,
Which we can never pay;
A long repudiated debt
Blackens our upward way.

Our fingers owed his fathers dead--
Disgrace beyond repair!
No late remorse, no new-found shame
Can save our honor there:
But we can now begin to pay
The starved and stunted heir!

We thank the Power above for all--
Gladly we do, and should.
But might we not save out a part
Of our large gratitude,
And give it to the power on earth--
Where it will do some good?

THREE THANKSGIVINGS

Andrew's letter and Jean's letter were in Mrs. Morrison's lap. She had
read them both, and sat looking at them with a varying sort of smile,
now motherly and now unmotherly.

"You belong with me," Andrew wrote. "It is not right that Jean's
husband should support my mother. I can do it easily now. You shall
have a good room and every comfort. The old house will let for enough
to give you quite a little income of your own, or it can be sold and I
will invest the money where you'll get a deal more out of it. It is not
right that you should live alone there. Sally is old and liable to
accident. I am anxious about you. Come on for Thanksgiving--and come
to stay. Here is the money to come with. You know I want you. Annie
joins me in sending love. ANDREW."

Mrs. Morrison read it all through again, and laid it down with her
quiet, twinkling smile. Then she read Jean's.

"Now, mother, you've got to come to us for Thanksgiving this year. Just
think! You haven't seen baby since he was three months old! And have
never seen the twins. You won't know him--he's such a splendid big boy
now. Joe says for you to come, of course. And, mother, why won't you
come and live with us? Joe wants you, too. There's the little room
upstairs; it's not very big, but we can put in a Franklin stove for you
and make you pretty comfortable. Joe says he should think you ought to
sell that white elephant of a place. He says he could put the money
into his store and pay you good interest. I wish you would, mother.
We'd just love to have you here. You'd be such a comfort to me, and
such a help with the babies. And Joe just loves you. Do come now, and
stay with us. Here is the money for the trip.--Your affectionate
daughter, JEANNIE."

Mrs. Morrison laid this beside the other, folded both, and placed them
in their respective envelopes, then in their several well-filled
pigeon-holes in her big, old-fashioned desk. She turned and paced
slowly up and down the long parlor, a tall woman, commanding of aspect,
yet of a winningly attractive manner, erect and light-footed, still
imposingly handsome.

It was now November, the last lingering boarder was long since gone, and
a quiet winter lay before her. She was alone, but for Sally; and she
smiled at Andrew's cautious expression, "liable to accident." He could
not say "feeble" or "ailing," Sally being a colored lady of changeless
aspect and incessant activity.

Mrs. Morrison was alone, and while living in the Welcome House she was
never unhappy. Her father had built it, she was born there, she grew up
playing on the broad green lawns in front, and in the acre of garden
behind. It was the finest house in the village, and she then thought it
the finest in the world.

Even after living with her father at Washington and abroad, after
visiting hall, castle and palace, she still found the Welcome House
beautiful and impressive.

If she kept on taking boarders she could live the year through, and pay
interest, but not principal, on her little mortgage. This had been the
one possible and necessary thing while the children were there, though
it was a business she hated.

But her youthful experience in diplomatic circles, and the years of
practical management in church affairs, enabled her to bear it with
patience and success. The boarders often confided to one another, as
they chatted and tatted on the long piazza, that Mrs. Morrison was
"certainly very refined."

Now Sally whisked in cheerfully, announcing supper, and Mrs. Morrison
went out to her great silver tea-tray at the lit end of the long, dark
mahogany table, with as much dignity as if twenty titled guests were
before her.

Afterward Mr. Butts called. He came early in the evening, with his
usual air of determination and a somewhat unusual spruceness. Mr. Peter
Butts was a florid, blonde person, a little stout, a little pompous,
sturdy and immovable in the attitude of a self-made man. He had been a
poor boy when she was a rich girl; and it gratified him much to
realize--and to call upon her to realize--that their positions had
changed. He meant no unkindness, his pride was honest and unveiled.
Tact he had none.

She had refused Mr. Butts, almost with laughter, when he proposed to her
in her gay girlhood. She had refused him, more gently, when he proposed
to her in her early widowhood. He had always been her friend, and her
husband's friend, a solid member of the church, and had taken the small
mortgage of the house. She refused to allow him at first, but he was
convincingly frank about it.

"This has nothing to do with my wanting you, Delia Morrison," he said.
"I've always wanted you--and I've always wanted this house, too. You
won't sell, but you've got to mortgage. By and by you can't pay up, and
I'll get it--see? Then maybe you'll take me--to keep the house. Don't
be a fool, Delia. It's a perfectly good investment."

She had taken the loan. She had paid the interest. She would pay the
interest if she had to take boarders all her life. And she would not,
at any price, marry Peter Butts.

He broached the subject again that evening, cheerful and undismayed.
"You might as well come to it, Delia," he said. "Then we could live
right here just the same. You aren't so young as you were, to be sure;
I'm not, either. But you are as good a housekeeper as
ever--better--you've had more experience."

"You are extremely kind, Mr. Butts," said the lady, "but I do not wish
to marry you."

"I know you don't," he said. "You've made that clear. You don't, but I
do. You've had your way and married the minister. He was a good man,
but he's dead. Now you might as well marry me."

"I do not wish to marry again, Mr. Butts; neither you nor anyone."

"Very proper, very proper, Delia," he replied. "It wouldn't look well
if you did--at any rate, if you showed it. But why shouldn't you? The
children are gone now--you can't hold them up against me any more."

"Yes, the children are both settled now, and doing nicely," she
admitted.

"You don't want to go and live with them--either one of them--do you?"
he asked.

"I should prefer to stay here," she answered.

"Exactly! And you can't! You'd rather live here and be a grandee--but
you can't do it. Keepin' house for boarders isn't any better than
keepin' house for me, as I see. You'd much better marry me."

"I should prefer to keep the house without you, Mr. Butts."

"I know you would. But you can't, I tell you. I'd like to know what a
woman of your age can do with a house like this--and no money? You
can't live eternally on hens' eggs and garden truck. That won't pay the
mortgage."

Mrs. Morrison looked at him with her cordial smile, calm and
non-committal. "Perhaps I can manage it," she said.

"That mortgage falls due two years from Thanksgiving, you know."

"Yes--I have not forgotten."

"Well, then, you might just as well marry me now, and save two years of
interest. It'll be my house, either way--but you'll be keepin' it just
the same."

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Butts. I must decline the offer none the
less. I can pay the interest, I am sure. And perhaps--in two years'
time--I can pay the principal. It's not a large sum."

"That depends on how you look at it," said he. "Two thousand dollars is
considerable money for a single woman to raise in two years--_and_
interest."

He went away, as cheerful and determined as ever; and Mrs. Morrison saw
him go with a keen, light in her fine eyes, a more definite line to that
steady, pleasant smile.

Then she went to spend Thanksgiving with Andrew. He was glad to see
her. Annie was glad to see her. They proudly installed her in "her
room," and said she must call it "home" now.

This affectionately offered home was twelve by fifteen, and eight feet
high. It had two windows, one looking at some pale gray clapboards
within reach of a broom, the other giving a view of several small fenced
yards occupied by cats, clothes and children. There was an ailanthus
tree under the window, a lady ailanthus tree. Annie told her how
profusely it bloomed. Mrs. Morrison particularly disliked the smell of
ailanthus flowers. "It doesn't bloom in November," said she to herself.
"I can be thankful for that!"

Andrew's church was very like the church of his father, and Mrs. Andrew
was doing her best to fill the position of minister's wife--doing it
well, too--there was no vacancy for a minister's mother.

Besides, the work she had done so cheerfully to help her husband was not
what she most cared for, after all. She liked the people, she liked to
manage, but she was not strong on doctrine. Even her husband had never
known how far her views differed from his. Mrs. Morrison had never
mentioned what they were.

Andrew's people were very polite to her. She was invited out with them,
waited upon and watched over and set down among the old ladies and
gentlemen--she had never realized so keenly that she was no longer
young. Here nothing recalled her youth, every careful provision
anticipated age. Annie brought her a hot-water bag at night, tucking it
in at the foot of the bed with affectionate care. Mrs. Morrison thanked
her, and subsequently took it out--airing the bed a little before she
got into it. The house seemed very hot to her, after the big, windy
halls at home.

The little dining-room, the little round table with the little round
fern-dish in the middle, the little turkey and the little
carving-set--game-set she would have called it--all made her feel as if
she was looking through the wrong end of an opera-glass.

In Annie's precise efficiency she saw no room for her assistance; no
room in the church, no room in the small, busy town, prosperous and
progressive, and no room in the house. "Not enough to turn round in!"
she said to herself. Annie, who had grown up in a city flat, thought
their little parsonage palatial. Mrs. Morrison grew up in the Welcome
House.

She stayed a week, pleasant and polite, conversational, interested in
all that went on.

"I think your mother is just lovely," said Annie to Andrew.

"Charming woman, your mother," said the leading church member.

"What a delightful old lady your mother is!" said the pretty soprano.

And Andrew was deeply hurt and disappointed when she announced her
determination to stay on for the present in her old home. "Dear boy,"
she said, "you mustn't take it to heart. I love to be with you, of
course, but I love my home, and want to keep it is long as I can. It is
a great pleasure to see you and Annie so well settled, and so happy
together. I am most truly thankful for you."

"My home is open to you whenever you wish to come, mother," said Andrew.
But he was a little angry.

Mrs. Morrison came home as eager as a girl, and opened her own door with
her own key, in spite of Sally's haste.

Two years were before her in which she must find some way to keep
herself and Sally, and to pay two thousand dollars and the interest to
Peter Butts. She considered her assets. There was the house--the white
elephant. It _was_ big--very big. It was profusely furnished. Her
father had entertained lavishly like the Southern-born, hospitable
gentleman he was; and the bedrooms ran in suites--somewhat deteriorated
by the use of boarders, but still numerous and habitable. Boarders--she
abhorred them. They were people from afar, strangers and interlopers.
She went over the place from garret to cellar, from front gate to
backyard fence.

The garden had great possibilities. She was fond of gardening. and
understood it well. She measured and estimated.

"This garden," she finally decided, "with the hens, will feed us two
women and sell enough to pay Sally. If we make plenty of jelly, it may
cover the coal bill, too. As to clothes--I don't need any. They last
admirably. I can manage. I can _live_--but two thousand dollars--_and_
interest!"

In the great attic was more furniture, discarded sets put there when her
extravagant young mother had ordered new ones. And chairs--uncounted
chairs. Senator Welcome used to invite numbers to meet his political
friends--and they had delivered glowing orations in the wide, double
parlors, the impassioned speakers standing on a temporary dais, now in
the cellar; and the enthusiastic listeners disposed more or less
comfortably on these serried rows of "folding chairs," which folded
sometimes, and let down the visitor in scarlet confusion to the floor.

She sighed as she remembered those vivid days and glittering nights.
She used to steal downstairs in her little pink wrapper and listen to
the eloquence. It delighted her young soul to see her father rising on
his toes, coming down sharply on his heels, hammering one hand upon the
other; and then to hear the fusilade of applause.

Here were the chairs, often borrowed for weddings, funerals, and church
affairs, somewhat worn and depleted, but still numerous. She mused upon
them. Chairs--hundreds of chairs. They would sell for very little.

She went through her linen room. A splendid stock in the old days;
always carefully washed by Sally; surviving even the boarders. Plenty
of bedding, plenty of towels, plenty of napkins and tablecloths. "It
would make a good hotel--but I _can't_ have it so--I _can't!_ Besides,
there's no need of another hotel here. The poor little Haskins House is
never full."

The stock in the china closet was more damaged than some other things,
naturally; but she inventoried it with care. The countless cups of
crowded church receptions were especially prominent. Later additions
these, not very costly cups, but numerous, appallingly.

When she had her long list of assets all in order, she sat and studied
it with a clear and daring mind. Hotel--boarding-house--she could think
of nothing else. School! A girls' school! A boarding school! There
was money to be made at that, and fine work done. It was a brilliant
thought at first, and she gave several hours, and much paper and ink, to
its full consideration. But she would need some capital for
advertising; she must engage teachers--adding to her definite
obligation; and to establish it, well, it would require time.

Mr. Butts, obstinate, pertinacious, oppressively affectionate, would
give her no time. He meant to force her to marry him for her own
good--and his. She shrugged her fine shoulders with a little shiver.
Marry Peter Butts! Never! Mrs. Morrison still loved her husband. Some
day she meant to see him again--God willing--and she did not wish to
have to tell him that at fifty she had been driven into marrying Peter
Butts.

Better live with Andrew. Yet when she thought of living with Andrew,
she shivered again. Pushing back her sheets of figures and lists of
personal property, she rose to her full graceful height and began to
walk the floor. There was plenty of floor to walk. She considered,
with a set deep thoughtfulness, the town and the townspeople, the
surrounding country, the hundreds upon hundreds of women whom she
knew--and liked, and who liked her.

It used to be said of Senator Welcome that he had no enemies; and some
people, strangers, maliciously disposed, thought it no credit to his
character. His daughter had no enemies, but no one had ever blamed her
for her unlimited friendliness. In her father's wholesale
entertainments the whole town knew and admired his daughter; in her
husband's popular church she had come to know the women of the
countryside about them. Her mind strayed off to these women, farmers'
wives, comfortably off in a plain way, but starving for companionship,
for occasional stimulus and pleasure. It was one of her joys in her
husband's time to bring together these women--to teach and entertain
them.

Suddenly she stopped short in the middle of the great high-ceiled room,
and drew her head up proudly like a victorious queen. One wide,
triumphant, sweeping glance she cast at the well-loved walls--and went
back to her desk, working swiftly, excitedly, well into the hours of the
night.

*

Presently the little town began to buzz, and the murmur ran far out into
the surrounding country. Sunbonnets wagged over fences; butcher carts
and pedlar's wagon carried the news farther; and ladies visiting found
one topic in a thousand houses.

Mrs. Morrison was going to entertain. Mrs. Morrison had invited the
whole feminine population, it would appear, to meet Mrs. Isabelle Carter
Blake, of Chicago. Even Haddleton had heard of Mrs. Isabelle Carter
Blake. And even Haddleton had nothing but admiration for her.

She was known the world over for her splendid work for children--for the
school children and the working children of the country. Yet she was
known also to have lovingly and wisely reared six children of her
own--and made her husband happy in his home. On top of that she had
lately written a novel, a popular novel, of which everyone was talking;
and on top of that she was an intimate friend of a certain conspicuous
Countess--an Italian.

It was even rumored, by some who knew Mrs. Morrison better than
others--or thought they did--that the Countess was coming, too! No one
had known before that Delia Welcome was a school-mate of Isabel Carter,
and a lifelong friend; and that was ground for talk in itself.

The day arrived, and the guests arrived. They came in hundreds upon
hundreds, and found ample room in the great white house.

The highest dream of the guests was realized--the Countess had come,
too. With excited joy they met her, receiving impressions that would
last them for all their lives, for those large widening waves of
reminiscence which delight us the more as years pass. It was an
incredible glory--Mrs. Isabelle Carter Blake, _and_ a Countess!

Some were moved to note that Mrs. Morrison looked the easy peer of these
eminent ladies, and treated the foreign nobility precisely as she did
her other friends.

She spoke, her clear quiet voice reaching across the murmuring din, and
silencing it.

"Shall we go into the east room? If you will all take chairs in the
east room, Mrs. Blake is going to be so kind as to address us. Also
perhaps her friend--"

They crowded in, sitting somewhat timorously on the unfolded chairs.

Then the great Mrs. Blake made them an address of memorable power and
beauty, which received vivid sanction from that imposing presence in
Parisian garments on the platform by her side. Mrs. Blake spoke to them
of the work she was interested in, and how it was aided everywhere by
the women's clubs. She gave them the number of these clubs, and
described with contagious enthusiasm the inspiration of their great
meetings. She spoke of the women's club houses, going up in city after
city, where many associations meet and help one another. She was
winning and convincing and most entertaining--an extremely attractive
speaker.

Had they a women's club there? They had not.

Not _yet,_ she suggested, adding that it took no time at all to make
one.

They were delighted and impressed with Mrs. Blake's speech, but its
effect was greatly intensified by the address of the Countess.

"I, too, am American," she told them; "born here, reared in England,
married in Italy." And she stirred their hearts with a vivid account of
the women's clubs and associations all over Europe, and what they were
accomplishing. She was going back soon, she said, the wiser and happier
for this visit to her native land, and she should remember particularly
this beautiful, quiet town, trusting that if she came to it again it
would have joined the great sisterhood of women, "whose hands were
touching around the world for the common good."

It was a great occasion.

The Countess left next day, but Mrs. Blake remained, and spoke in some
of the church meetings, to an ever widening circle of admirers. Her
suggestions were practical.

"What you need here is a 'Rest and Improvement Club,'" she said. "Here
are all you women coming in from the country to do your shopping--and no
place to go to. No place to lie down if you're tired, to meet a friend,
to eat your lunch in peace, to do your hair. All you have to do is
organize, pay some small regular due, and provide yourselves with what
you want."

There was a volume of questions and suggestions, a little opposition,
much random activity.

Who was to do it? Where was there a suitable place? They would have to
hire someone to take charge of it. It would only be used once a week.
It would cost too much.

Mrs. Blake, still practical, made another suggestion. Why not combine
business with pleasure, and make use of the best place in town, if you
can get it? I _think_ Mrs. Morrison could be persuaded to let you use
part of her house; it's quite too big for one woman."

Then Mrs. Morrison, simple and cordial as ever, greeted with warm
enthusiasm by her wide circle of friends.

"I have been thinking this over," she said. "Mrs. Blake has been
discussing it with me. My house is certainly big enough for all of you,
and there am I, with nothing to do but entertain you. Suppose you
formed such a club as you speak of--for Rest and Improvement. My
parlors are big enough for all manner of meetings; there are bedrooms in
plenty for resting. If you form such a club I shall be glad to help
with my great, cumbersome house, shall be delighted to see so many
friends there so often; and I think I could furnish accommodations more
cheaply than you could manage in any other way.

Then Mrs. Blake gave them facts and figures, showing how much clubhouses
cost--and how little this arrangement would cost. "Most women have very
little money, I know," she said, "and they hate to spend it on
themselves when they have; but even a little money from each goes a long
way when it is put together. I fancy there are none of us so poor we
could not squeeze out, say ten cents a week. For a hundred women that
would be ten dollars. Could you feed a hundred tired women for ten
dollars, Mrs. Morrison?"

Mrs. Morrison smiled cordially. "Not on chicken pie," she said, "But I
could give them tea and coffee, crackers and cheese for that, I think.
And a quiet place to rest, and a reading room, and a place to hold
meetings."

Then Mrs. Blake quite swept them off their feet by her wit and
eloquence. She gave them to understand that if a share in the palatial
accommodation of the Welcome House, and as good tea and coffee as old
Sally made, with a place to meet, a place to rest, a place to talk, a
place to lie down, could be had for ten cents a week each, she advised
them to clinch the arrangement at once before Mrs. Morrison's natural
good sense had overcome her enthusiasm.

Before Mrs. Isabelle Carter Blake had left, Haddleton had a large and
eager women's club, whose entire expenses, outside of stationary and
postage, consisted of ten cents a week _per capita,_ paid to Mrs.
Morrison. Everybody belonged. It was open at once for charter members,
and all pressed forward to claim that privileged place.

They joined by hundreds, and from each member came this tiny sum to Mrs.
Morrison each week. It was very little money, taken separately. But it
added up with silent speed. Tea and coffee, purchased in bulk, crackers
by the barrel, and whole cheeses--these are not expensive luxuries. The
town was full of Mrs. Morrison's ex-Sunday-school boys, who furnished
her with the best they had--at cost. There was a good deal of work, a
good deal of care, and room for the whole supply of Mrs. Morrison's
diplomatic talent and experience. Saturdays found the Welcome House as
full as it could hold, and Sundays found Mrs. Morrison in bed. But she
liked it.

A busy, hopeful year flew by, and then she went to Jean's for
Thanksgiving.

The room Jean gave her was about the same size as her haven in Andrew's
home, but one flight higher up, and with a sloping ceiling. Mrs.
Morrison whitened her dark hair upon it, and rubbed her head confusedly.
Then she shook it with renewed determination.

The house was full of babies. There was little Joe, able to get about,
and into everything. There were the twins, and there was the new baby.
There was one servant, over-worked and cross. There was a small, cheap,
totally inadequate nursemaid. There was Jean, happy but tired, full of
joy, anxiety and affection, proud of her children, proud of her husband,
and delighted to unfold her heart to her mother.

By the hour she babbled of their cares and hopes, while Mrs. Morrison,
tall and elegant in her well-kept old black silk, sat holding the baby
or trying to hold the twins. The old silk was pretty well finished by
the week's end. Joseph talked to her also, telling her how well he was
getting on, and how much he needed capital, urging her to come and stay
with them; it was such a help to Jeannie; asking questions about the
house.

There was no going visiting here. Jeannie could not leave the babies.
And few visitors; all the little suburb being full of similarly
overburdened mothers. Such as called found Mrs. Morrison charming.
What she found them, she did not say. She bade her daughter an
affectionate good-bye when the week was up, smiling at their mutual
contentment.

"Good-bye, my dear children," she said. "I am so glad for all your
happiness. I am thankful for both of you."

But she was more thankful to get home.

Mr. Butts did not have to call for his interest this time, but he called
none the less.

"How on earth'd you get it, Delia?" he demanded. "Screwed it out o'
these club-women?"

"Your interest is so moderate, Mr. Butts, that it is easier to meet than
you imagine," was her answer. "Do you know the average interest they
charge in Colorado? The women vote there, you know."

He went away with no more personal information than that; and no nearer
approach to the twin goals of his desire than the passing of the year.

"One more year, Delia," he said; "then you'll have to give in."

"One more year!" she said to herself, and took up her chosen task with
renewed energy.

The financial basis of the undertaking was very simple, but it would
never have worked so well under less skilful management. Five dollars a
year these country women could not have faced, but ten cents a week was
possible to the poorest. There was no difficulty in collecting, for
they brought it themselves; no unpleasantness in receiving, for old
Sally stood at the receipt of custom and presented the covered cash box
when they came for their tea.

On the crowded Saturdays the great urns were set going, the mighty array
of cups arranged in easy reach, the ladies filed by, each taking her
refection and leaving her dime. Where the effort came was in enlarging
the membership and keeping up the attendance, and this effort was
precisely in the line of Mrs. Morrison's splendid talents.

Serene, cheerful, inconspicuously active, planning like the born
statesman she was, executing like a practical politician, Mrs. Morrison
gave her mind to the work, and thrived upon it. Circle within circle,
and group within group, she set small classes and departments at work,
having a boys' club by and by in the big room over the woodshed, girls'
clubs, reading clubs, study clubs, little meetings of every sort that
were not held in churches, and some that were--previously.

For each and all there was, if wanted, tea and coffee, crackers and
cheese; simple fare, of unvarying excellence, and from each and all,
into the little cashbox, ten cents for these refreshments. From the
club members this came weekly; and the club members, kept up by a
constant variety of interests, came every week. As to numbers, before
the first six months was over The Haddleton Rest and Improvement Club
numbered five hundred women.

Now, five hundred times ten cents a week is twenty-six hundred dollars a
year. Twenty-six hundred dollars a year would not be very much to build
or rent a large house, to furnish five hundred people with chairs,
lounges, books, and magazines, dishes and service; and with food and
drink even of the simplest. But if you are miraculously supplied with a
club-house, furnished, with a manager and servant on the spot, then that
amount of money goes a long way.

On Saturdays Mrs. Morrison hired two helpers for half a day, for half a
dollar each. She stocked the library with many magazines for fifty
dollars a year. She covered fuel, light, and small miscellanies with
another hundred. And she fed her multitude with the plain viands agreed
upon, at about four cents apiece.

For her collateral entertainments, her many visits, the various new
expenses entailed, she paid as well; and yet at the end of the first
year she had not only her interest, but a solid thousand dollars of
clear profit. With a calm smile she surveyed it, heaped in neat stacks
of bills in the small safe in the wall behind her bed. Even Sally did
not know it was there.

The second season was better than the first. There were difficulties,
excitements, even some opposition, but she rounded out the year
triumphantly. "After that," she said to herself, "they may have the
deluge if they like."

She made all expenses, made her interest, made a little extra cash,
clearly her own, all over and above the second thousand dollars.

Then did she write to son and daughter, inviting them and their families
to come home to Thanksgiving, and closing each letter with joyous pride:
"Here is the money to come with."

They all came, with all the children and two nurses. There was plenty
of room in the Welcome House, and plenty of food on the long mahogany
table. Sally was as brisk as a bee, brilliant in scarlet and purple;
Mrs. Morrison carved her big turkey with queenly grace.

"I don't see that you're over-run with club women, mother," said
Jeannie.

"It's Thanksgiving, you know; they're all at home. I hope they are all
as happy, as thankful for their homes as I am for mine," said Mrs.
Morrison.

Afterward Mr. Butts called. With dignity and calm unruffled, Mrs.
Morrison handed him his interest--and principal.

Mr. Butts was almost loath to receive it, though his hand automatically
grasped the crisp blue check.

"I didn't know you had a bank account," he protested, somewhat
dubiously.

"Oh, yes; you'll find the check will be honored, Mr. Butts."

"I'd like to know how you got this money. You _can't_ 'a' skinned it
out o' that club of yours."

"I appreciate your friendly interest, Mr. Butts; you have been most
kind."

"I believe some of these great friends of yours have lent it to you.
You won't be any better off, I can tell you."

"Come, come, Mr. Butts! Don't quarrel with good money. Let us part
friends."

And they parted.

HOW DOTH THE HAT

How doth the hat loom large upon her head!
Furred like a busby; plumed as hearses are;
Armed with eye-spearing quills; bewebbed and hung
With lacy, silky, downy draperies;
With spread, wide-waggling feathers fronded high
In bosky thickets of Cimmerian gloom.

How doth the hat with colors dare the eye!
Arrest--attract--allure--affront--appall!
Vivid and varied as are paroquets;
Dove-dull; one mass of white; all solid red;
Black with the blackness of a mourning world--
Compounded type of "Chaos and Old Night"!

How doth the hat expand: wax wide, and swell!
Such is its size that none can predicate
Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame
Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk;
Trespassing rude on all who walk beside,
Brutally blinding all who sit behind.

How doth the hat's mere mass more monstrous grow
Into a riot of repugnant shapes!
Shapes ignominious, extreme, bizarre,
Bulbous, distorted, unsymmetrical--
Of no relation to the human head--
To beauty, comfort, dignity or grace.

Shape of a dishpan! Of a pail! A tub!
Of an inverted wastebasket wherein
The head finds lodgment most appropriate!
Shape of a wide-spread wilted griddlecake!
Shape of the body of an octopus
Set sideways on a fireman's misplaced brim!

How doth the hat show callous cruelty
In decoration costing countless deaths;
Carrying corpses for its ornaments;
Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls,
The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings;
Torn fragments of a world of wasted life.

How doth the hat effect the minds of men?
Patient bill-payers, chivalrously dumb!
What does it indicate of woman's growth;
Her sense of beauty, her intelligence,
Her thought for others measured with herself,
Her place and grade in human life to-day?

INTRODUCING THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL

"O, no--Please don't--I'd rather not meet them!"

I'm sorry but you have to meet them, constantly.

"But I don't have to know them, surely!"

You will find it safer and easier if you do.

"But they are not proper persons to meet--I've heard awful things about
them."

Those stories come from people who never really knew them. They have
been much maligned I assure you. Let me tell you a little about them
before they come up.

The World yonder is really an excellent fellow, but sulky and erratic
because he's not well used. Think of a beautiful, fruitful, home garden
used for nothing but to play ball and fight in--and then blamed for its
condition. That's the way he feels.

Then there's the Flesh. Never was a good fellow more abused! He's been
brought up wrong, from babyhood--but he's all right inside.

As to the Devil--we really ought to be ashamed of treating him so. He'd
have died centuries ago, but we will keep him going--and then blame him
because his behavior's out of date!

Here they come. Allow me to present:

The World--Just Us; We and our Workshop.

The Flesh--Just Us; Our Natural Vehicle and Servant.

The Devil--Just Us; but an Anachronism--an artificially preserved
Extinct Ancestor!

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER I.

HANDICAPPED

One may use the Old Man of the Sea,
For a partner or patron,
But helpless and hapless is he
Who is ridden, inextricably,
By a fond old mer-matron.

The Warden house was more impressive in appearance than its neighbors.
It had "grounds," instead of a yard or garden; it had wide pillared
porches and "galleries," showing southern antecedents; moreover, it had
a cupola, giving date to the building, and proof of the continuing
ambitions of the builders.

The stately mansion was covered with heavy flowering vines, also with
heavy mortgages. Mrs. Roscoe Warden and her four daughters reposed
peacefully under the vines, while Roscoe Warden, Jr., struggled
desperately under the mortgages.

A slender, languid lady was Mrs. Warden, wearing her thin but still
brown hair in "water-waves" over a pale high forehead. She was sitting
on a couch on the broad, rose-shaded porch, surrounded by billowing
masses of vari-colored worsted. It was her delight to purchase skein on
skein of soft, bright-hued wool, cut it all up into short lengths, tie
them together again in contrasting colors, and then crochet this hashed
rainbow into afghans of startling aspect. California does not call for
afghans to any great extent, but "they make such acceptable presents,"
Mrs. Warden declared, to those who questioned the purpose of her work;
and she continued to send them off, on Christmases, birthdays, and minor
weddings, in a stream of pillowy bundles. As they were accepted, they
must have been acceptable, and the stream flowed on.

Around her, among the gay blossoms and gayer wools, sat her four
daughters, variously intent. The mother, a poetic soul, had named them
musically and with dulcet rhymes: Madeline and Adeline were the two
eldest, Coraline and Doraline the two youngest. It had not occurred to
her until too late that those melodious terminations made it impossible
to call one daughter without calling two, and that "Lina" called them
all.

"Mis' Immerjin," said a soft voice in the doorway, "dere pos'tively
ain't no butter in de house fer supper."

"No butter?" said Mrs. Warden, incredulously. "Why, Sukey, I'm sure we
had a tub sent up last--last Tuesday!"

"A week ago Tuesday, more likely, mother," suggested Dora.

"Nonsense, Dora! It was this week, wasn't it, girls?" The mother
appealed to them quite earnestly, as if the date of that tub's delivery
would furnish forth the supper-table; but none of the young ladies save
Dora had even a contradiction to offer.

"You know I never notice things," said the artistic Cora; and "the
de-lines," as their younger sisters called them, said nothing.

"I might borrow some o' Mis' Bell?" suggested Sukey; "dat's nearer 'n'
de sto'."

"Yes, do, Sukey," her mistress agreed. "It is so hot. But what have
you done with that tubful?"

"Why, some I tuk back to Mis' Bell for what I borrered befo'--I'm always
most careful to make return for what I borrers--and yo' know, Mis'
Warden, dat waffles and sweet potaters and cohn bread dey do take
butter; to say nothin' o' them little cakes you all likes so well--_an'_
de fried chicken, _an'_--"

"Never mind, Sukey; you go and present my compliments to Mrs. Bell, and
ask her for some; and be sure you return it promptly. Now, girls, don't
let me forget to tell Ross to send up another tub."

"We can't seem to remember any better than you can, mother," said
Adeline, dreamily. "Those details are so utterly uninteresting."

"I should think it was Sukey's business to tell him," said Madeline with
decision; while the "a-lines" kept silence this time.

"There! Sukey's gone!" Mrs. Warden suddenly remarked, watching the
stout figure moving heavily away under the pepper trees. "And I meant
to have asked her to make me a glass of shrub! Dora, dear, you run and
get it for mother."

Dora laid down her work, not too regretfully, and started off.

"That child is the most practical of any of you," said her mother; which
statement was tacitly accepted. It was not extravagant praise.

Dora poked about in the refrigerator for a bit of ice. She ho no idea
of the high cost of ice in that region--it came from "the store," like
all their provisions. It did not occur to her that fish and milk and
melons made a poor combination in flavor; or that the clammy,
sub-offensive smell was not the natural and necessary odor of
refrigerators. Neither did she think that a sunny corner of the back
porch near the chimney, though convenient, was an ill-selected spot for
a refrigerator. She couldn't find the ice-pick, so put a big piece of
ice in a towel and broke it on the edge of the sink; replaced the
largest fragment, used what she wanted, and left the rest to filter
slowly down through a mass of grease and tea-leaves; found the raspberry
vinegar, and made a very satisfactory beverage which her mother received
with grateful affection.

"Thank you, my darling," she said. "I wish you'd made a pitcherful."

"Why didn't you, Do?" her sisters demanded.

"You're too late," said Dora, hunting for her needle and then for her
thimble, and then for her twist; "but there's more in the kitchen."

"I'd rather go without than go into the kitchen," said Adeline; "I do
despise a kitchen." And this seemed to be the general sentiment; for no
one moved.

"My mother always liked raspberry shrub," said Mrs. Warden; "and your
Aunt Leicester, and your Raymond cousins."

Mrs. Warden had a wide family circle, many beloved relatives,
"connections" of whom she was duly proud and "kin" in such widening
ramifications that even her carefully reared daughters lost track of
them.

"You young people don't seem to care about your cousins at all!" pursued
their mother, somewhat severely, setting her glass on the railing, from
whence it was presently knocked off and broken.

"That's the fifth!" remarked Dora, under breath.

"Why should we, Ma?" inquired Cora. "We've never seen one of
them--except Madam Weatherstone!"

"We'll never forget _her!"_ said Madeline, with delicate decision,
laying down the silk necktie she was knitting for Roscoe. "What
_beautiful_ manners she had!"

"How rich is she, mother? Do you know?" asked Dora.

"Rich enough to do something for Roscoe, I'm sure, if she had a proper
family spirit," replied Mrs. Warden. "Her mother was own cousin to my
grandmother--one of the Virginia Paddingtons. Or she might do something
for you girls."

"I wish she would!" Adeline murmured, softly, her large eyes turned to
the horizon, her hands in her lap over the handkerchief she was marking
for Roscoe.

"Don't be ungrateful, Adeline," said her mother, firmly. "You have a
good home and a good brother; no girl ever had a better."

"But there is never anything going on," broke in Coraline, in a tone of
complaint; "no parties, no going away for vacations, no anything."

"Now, Cora, don't be discontented! You must not add a straw to dear
Roscoe's burdens," said her mother.

"Of course not, mother; I wouldn't for the world. I never saw her but
that once; and she wasn't very cordial. But, as you say, she might do
_something._ She might invite us to visit her."

"If she ever comes back again, I'm going to recite for her," said, Dora,
firmly.

Her mother gazed fondly on her youngest. "I wish you could, dear," she
agreed. "I'm sure you have talent; and Madam Weatherstone would
recognize it. And Adeline's music too. And Cora's art. I am very
proud of my girls."

Cora sat where the light fell well upon her work. She was illuminating
a volume of poems, painting flowers on the margins, in appropriate
places--for Roscoe.

"I wonder if he'll care for it?" she said, laying down her brush and
holding the book at arm's length to get the effect.

"Of course he will!" answered her mother, warmly. "It is not only the
beauty of it, but the affection! How are you getting on, Dora?"

Dora was laboring at a task almost beyond her fourteen years, consisting
of a negligee shirt of outing flannel, upon the breast of which she was
embroidering a large, intricate design--for Roscoe. She was an
ambitious child, but apt to tire in the execution of her large projects.

"I guess it'll be done," she said, a little wearily. "What are you going
to give him, mother?"

"Another bath-robe; his old one is so worn. And nothing is too good for
my boy."

"He's coming," said Adeline, who was still looking down the road; and
they all concealed their birthday work in haste.

A tall, straight young fellow, with an air of suddenly-faced maturity
upon him, opened the gate under the pepper trees and came toward them.

He had the finely molded features we see in portraits of handsome
ancestors, seeming to call for curling hair a little longish, and a rich
profusion of ruffled shirt. But his hair was sternly short, his shirt
severely plain, his proudly carried head spoke of effort rather than of
ease in its attitude.

Dora skipped to meet him, Cora descended a decorous step or two.
Madeline and Adeline, arm in arm, met him at the piazza edge, his mother
lifted her face.

"Well, mother, dear!" Affectionately he stooped and kissed her, and she
held his hand and stroked it lovingly. The sisters gathered about with
teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy
her father always used to bring her, and her brother still remembered.

"Aren't you home early, dear?" asked Mrs. Warden.

"Yes; I had a little headache"--he passed his hand over his
forehead--"and Joe can run the store till after supper, anyhow." They
flew to get him camphor, cologne, a menthol-pencil. Dora dragged forth
the wicker lounge. He was laid out carefully and fanned and fussed over
till his mother drove them all away.

"Now, just rest," she said. "It's an hour to supper time yet!" And she
covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and carrying
away the incomplete one and its tumultuous constituents.

He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers
instead of the smell of molasses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.
But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it. He loved
his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not
love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him at
his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.

That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not
occur to him. He had lived there most of his life, and it was home.
That the expenses of running the household were three times what they
needed to be, he did not know. His father had not questioned their
style of living, nor did he. That a family of five women might, between
them, do the work of the house, he did not even consider.

Mrs. Warden's health was never good, and since her husband's death she
had made daily use of many afghans on the many lounges of the house.
Madeline was "delicate," and Adeline was "frail"; Cora was "nervous,"
Dora was "only a child." So black Sukey and her husband Jonah did the
work of the place, so far as it was done; and Mrs. Warden held it a
miracle of management that she could "do with one servant," and the
height of womanly devotion on her daughters' part that they dusted the
parlor and arranged the flowers.

Roscoe shut his eyes and tried to rest, but his problem beset him
ruthlessly. There was the store--their one and only source of income.
There was the house, a steady, large expense. There were five women to
clothe and keep contented, beside himself. There was the unappeasable
demand of the mortgage--and there was Diantha.

When Mr. Warden died, some four years previously, Roscoe was a lad of
about twenty, just home from college, full of dreams of great service to
the world in science, expecting to go back for his doctor's degree next
year. Instead of which the older man had suddenly dropped beneath the
burden he had carried with such visible happiness and pride, such
unknown anxiety and straining effort; and the younger one had to step
into the harness on the spot.

He was brave, capable, wholly loyal to his mother and sisters, reared in
the traditions of older days as to a man's duty toward women. In his
first grief for his father, and the ready pride with which he undertook
to fill his place, he had not in the least estimated the weight of care
he was to carry, nor the time that he must carry it. A year, a year or
two, a few years, he told himself, as they passed, and he would make
more money; the girls, of course, would marry; he could "retire" in time
and take up his scientific work again. Then--there was Diantha.

When he found he loved this young neighbor of theirs, and that she loved
him, the first flush of happiness made all life look easier. They had
been engaged six months--and it was beginning to dawn upon the young man
that it might be six years--or sixteen years--before he could marry.

He could not sell the business--and if he could, he knew of no better
way to take care of his family. The girls did not marry, and even when
they did, he had figured this out to a dreary certainty, he would still
not be free. To pay the mortgages off, and keep up the house, even
without his sisters, would require all the money the store would bring
in for some six years ahead. The young man set his teeth hard and
turned his head sharply toward the road.

And there was Diantha.

She stood at the gate and smiled at him. He sprang to his feet,
headacheless for the moment, and joined her. Mrs. Warden, from the
lounge by her bedroom window, saw them move off together, and sighed.

"Poor Roscoe!" she said to herself. "It is very hard for him. But he
carries his difficulties nobly. He is a son to be proud of." And she
wept a little.

Diantha slipped her hand in his offered arm--he clasped it warmly with
his, and they walked along together.

"You won't come in and see mother and the girls?"

"No, thank you; not this time. I must get home and get supper.
Besides, I'd rather see just you."

He felt it a pity that there were so many houses along the road here,
but squeezed her hand, anyhow.

She looked at him keenly. "Headache?" she asked.

"Yes; it's nothing; it's gone already."

"Worry?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose it is," he answered. "But I ought not to worry. I've
got a good home, a good mother, good sisters, and--you!" And he took
advantage of a high hedge and an empty lot on either side of them.

Diantha returned his kiss affectionately enough, but seemed preoccupied,
and walked in silence till he asked her what she was thinking about.

"About you, of course," she answered, brightly. "There are things I want
to say; and yet--I ought not to."

"You can say anything on earth to me," he answered.

"You are twenty-four," she began, musingly.

"Admitted at once."

"And I'm twenty-one and a half."

"That's no such awful revelation, surely!"

"And we've been engaged ever since my birthday," the girl pursued.

"All these are facts, dearest."

"Now, Ross, will you be perfectly frank with me? May I ask you an--an
impertinent question?"

"You may ask me any question you like; it couldn't be impertinent."

"You'll be scandalised, I know--but--well, here goes. What would you
think if Madeline--or any of the girls--should go away to work?"

He looked at her lovingly, but with a little smile on his firm mouth.

"I shouldn't allow it," he said.

"O--allow it? I asked you what you'd think."

"I should think it was a disgrace to the family, and a direct reproach
to me," be answered. "But it's no use talking about that. None of the
girls have any such foolish notion. And I wouldn't permit it if they
had."

Diantha smiled. "I suppose you never would permit your wife to work?"

"My widow might have to--not my wife." He held his fine head a trifle
higher, and her hand ached for a moment.

"Wouldn't you let me work--to help you, Ross?"

"My dearest girl, you've got something far harder than that to do for
me, and that's wait."

His face darkened again, and he passed his hand over his forehead.
"Sometimes I feel as if I ought not to hold you at all!" he burst out,
bitterly. "You ought to be free to marry a better man."

"There aren't any!" said Diantha, shaking her head slowly from side to
side. "And if there were--millions--I wouldn't marry any of 'em. I
love _you,"_ she firmly concluded.

"Then we'll just _wait,"_ said he, setting his teeth on the word, as if
he would crush it. "It won't be hard with you to help. You're better
worth it than Rachael and Leah together." They walked a few steps
silently.

"But how about science?" she asked him.

"I don't let myself think of it. I'll take that up later. We're young
enough, both of us, to wait for our happiness."

"And have you any idea--we might as well face the worst--how many years
do you think that will be, dearest?"

He was a little annoyed at her persistence. Also, though he would not
admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask. A
woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting. She ought to
trust--to just wait on general principles.

"I can face a thing better if I know just what I'm facing," said the
girl, quietly, "and I'd wait for you, if I had to, all my life. Will it
be twenty years, do you think?"

He looked relieved. "Why, no, indeed, darling. It oughtn't to be at
the outside more than five. Or six," he added, honest though reluctant.

"You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding
accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages. But the business
is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up." He shook his broad
shoulders determinedly. "I should think it might be within five,
perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes--such as you, my heart's
delight."

They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say
good-night. A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen,
roofed over by the wide acacia boughs. Many a long good-night had they
exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon. They sat
there, silent, now.

Diantha's heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in
him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom.
His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her
mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family
lived in careless wastefulness. That five women--for Dora was older
than she had been when she began to do housework--should require
servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride.
That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their
brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply.
Moreover, she felt well assured that with a different family to
"support," Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and
irrecoverably. Even that funeral--her face hardened as she thought of
the conspicuous "lot," the continual flowers, the monument (not wholly
paid for yet, that monument, though this she did not know)--all that
expenditure to do honor to the man they had worked to death (thus
brutally Diantha put it) was probably enough to put off their happiness
for a whole year.

She rose at last, her hand still held in his. "I'm sorry, but I've got
to get supper, dear," she said, "and you must go. Good-night for the
present; you'll be round by and by?"

"Yes, for a little while, after we close up," said he, and took himself
off, not too suddenly, walking straight and proud while her eves were on
him, throwing her a kiss from the corner; but his step lagging and his
headache settling down upon him again as he neared the large house with
the cupola.

Diantha watched him out of sight, turned and marched up the path to her
own door, her lips set tight, her well-shaped head as straightly held as
his. "It's a shame, a cruel, burning shame!" she told herself
rebelliously. "A man of his ability. Why, he could do anything, in his
own work! And he loved it so!

"To keep a grocery store--

""And nothing to show for all that splendid effort!

"They don't do a thing? They just _live_--and 'keep house!' All those
women!

"Six years? Likely to be sixty! But I'm not going to wait!"

WHERE THE HEART IS

I.

A small stone city, very old, built upon rock, rock-paved, rock-bound
with twenty centuries of walls.

A Ghetto, an age-old Ghetto, crowded into a stony corner of the crowded
stony city; its steep and narrow confines not more a boundary than the
iron prejudices that built them.

In the Ghetto--life, human life; close-pressed, kept to its elemental
forms, with a vitality purchased at nature's awful price--by surviving
slow extinction.

This life, denied all larger grouping, finds its sole joy in fierce deep
love of family and home. This home a room, a low and narrow room,
unwholesome, dark, incredibly filled up, yet overflowing most with love.

Here was peace. Here was Honor wherewith to face the outer Scorn. Here
was Safety--the only safety known. Here, most of all was Love, Love,
wound and interwound with the blood-tie, deepened by religion,
intensified by centuries of relentless pressure, strengthened a
thousandfold by the unbroken cruelty of the environment. Love, one with
the family; the family one with the home; the home, for generation after
generation--one room!

*

A miracle! Some daughter of this house, strayed as a child, found by
eccentric travellers, taken to England, reared with love and care to
strange exotic beauty, marrying a great landowner so lost in passionate
devotion that he gave her all he had, and, dying, left her heir to vast
estates.

She following, her family inherit the estate, and come to take
possession.

They enter the tall pillared gates; they wander up the shaded avenue, a
little group, huddled and silent, timid, ill at ease. They mount the
wide, white marble-terraced steps, the children crowding close, the
mother frightened, the father striving to hold up this new strange pride
under his time-swollen burden of humility and fear.

These towering halls, these broad-curved stairways, these lofty
chambers, even the great kitchens and their clustering offices, are to
this timid group as wide and desolate as deserts or the sea.

They seek a room, a room that shall be small enough and low enough and
dark enough; they reach at last one friendly sheltering little
room--crowd into it with tumultuous affection, and find a home!

*

It is home where the heart is!

II.

A new age where new power has conquered a new element, and sky-sailors
seek for large discoveries compared to which the old "new world" was but
a dooryard venture. Our little world now known from coast to coast and
pole to pole; its problems solved, its full powers mastered; its sweet
serviceableness and unfailing comfort the common joy of all.

Later science, piling wonder upon wonder, handling radiant energy,
packing compressed air for long excursions into outer space, sends out
some skyship on tremendous errands of interstellar search. Days, weeks,
they flit, with speed incredible, our earth a speck, our moon invisible,
our sun a star among the others now; then having done their work, turn
the sharp prow and study their vast charts for the return.

Out of that blackness, wider than our minds, back from the awful
strangeness of new stars, they turn and fly. All know their charts, all
have their telescopes, all see that old familiar system swinging nearer.
They greet the sun as we Fire Island--the moon like Sandy Hook.

But that small star, bigger and bigger now, its heavenly radiance fading
softly down to the warm glow of earthly beauty, coming out round and
full at last--ah! how they choke, how they cry out to see it!

Nearer--the blue skin of the all-enclosing sea, the green of
interrupting continents; now they can recognize the hemisphere--the
tears come--this is home!

*

It is home where the heart is.

THANKSGIVING

I never thought much of the folks who pray
The Lord to make them thankful for a meal
Expecting Him to furnish all the food
And then provide them with the gratitude
They haven't grace to feel.

I never thought much of this yearly thanks,
Either for what once happened long ago,
Or for "our constant mercies." To my mind
If we're to thank a Power that's daily kind,
Our annual's too slow.

Suppose we spread Thanksgiving--hand it round--
Give God an honest heartful every day;
And, while we're being thankful, why not give
Some gratitude to those by whom we live--
As well as stingy pay?

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE, or THE MAN-MADE WORLD

I.

AS TO HUMANNESS.

Let us begin, inoffensively, with sheep. The sheep is a beast with
which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the
common stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main
sources of clothing; and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and
stupidity.

In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroying
grass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains,
sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of
the shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and behavior of the sheep.

By the poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily;
unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeatedly
described, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of the
animal.

To the scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity of
sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation.
This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded
racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs
and corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump. If
those behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived. If they stopped to
exercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; they
and their judgment with them.

All these things, and many that are similar, occur to us when we think
of sheep. They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly; but what of it?
All that has been said was said of sheep, _genus ovis,_ that bland
beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness. so widely known. If
we think of the sheep-dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and
shepherd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the
Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both rams
and ewes alike. In regard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we
think only of their sheepishness, not at all of their ramishness or
eweishness. That which is ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is
easily recognized as distinguishing that particular species of animal,
and has no relation whatever to the sex thereof.

Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein his
character differs from the sheep. We find he has a more quarrelsome
disposition. He paws the earth and makes a noise. He has a tendency to
butt. So has a goat--Mr. Goat. So has Mr. Buffalo, and Mr. Moose, and
Mr. Antelope. This tendency to plunge head foremost at an
adversary--and to find any other gentleman an adversary on
sight--evidently does not pertain to sheep, to _genus ovis;_ but to any
male creature with horns.

As "function comes before organ," we may even give a reminiscent glance
down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act of
butting--passionately and perpetually repeated--born of the beliggerent
spirit of the male--produced horns!

The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love and care for her little ones,
gives them milk and tries to guard them. But so does a goat--Mrs. Goat.
So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest. Evidently this mother instinct is
no peculiarity of _genus ovis,_ but of any female creature.

Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love and
mother-care, while the father bird, though not a butter, fights with
beak and wing and spur. His competition is more effective through
display. The wish to please, the need to please, the overmastering
necessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made the
male bird blossom like a butterfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage,
rears haughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling
blobs such as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid feathers for pure
ornament appear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect becomes in
him a mass of glittering drapery.

Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observe
his mien! To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure; to
sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything--to beauty--for her
sake--this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; the
characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cock! With drumming of
loud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he woos his
mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with his
rivals. To butt--to strut--to make a noise--all for love's sake; these
acts are common to the male.

We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs
to the male--to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is
feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females,
irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equine
or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of sex.

In our own species all this is changed. We have been so taken up with
the phenomena of masculinity and femininity, that our common humanity
has largely escaped notice. We know we are human, naturally, and are
very proud of it; but we do not consider in what our humanness consists;
nor how men and women may fall short of it, or overstep its bounds, in
continual insistence upon their special differences. It is "manly" to
do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but what a human being should do
under the circumstances is not thought of.

The only time when we do recognize what we call "common humanity" is in
extreme cases, matters of life and death; when either man or woman is
expected to behave as if they were also human creatures. Since the
range of feeling and action proper to humanity, as such, is far wider
than that proper to either sex, it seems at first somewhat remarkable
that we have given it so little recognition.

A little classification will help us here. We have certain qualities in
common with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, resilience. It
is clear that these are not human. We have other qualities in common
with all forms of life; cellular construction, for instance, the
reproduction of cells and the need of nutrition. These again are not
human. We have others, many others, common to the higher mammals; which
are not exclusively ours--are not distinctively "human." What then are
true human characteristics? In what way is the human species
distinguished from all other species?

Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it is
mechanical, psychical and social. Our power to make and use things is
essentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools. We have added to
our teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine; to our claws the
spade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean creature, using
the larger brain power through a wide variety of changing weapons. This
is one of our main and vital distinctions. Ancient animal races are
traced and known by mere bones and shells, ancient human races by their
buildings, tools and utensils.

That degree of development which gives us the human mind is a clear
distinction of race. The savage who can count a hundred is more human
than the savage who can count ten.

More prominent than either of these is the social nature of humanity.
We are by no means the only group-animal; that ancient type of industry
the ant, and even the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But insects
of their kind are found living alone. Human beings never. Our
human-ness begins with some low form of social relation and increases as
that relation develops.

Human life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls "mutual
aid," and human progress keeps step absolutely with that interchange of
specialized services which makes society organic. The nomad, living on
cattle as ants live on theirs, is less human than the farmer, raising
food by intelligently applied labor; and the extension of trade and
commerce, from mere village market-places to the world-exchanges of
to-day, is extension of human-ness as well.

Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and unchangeable,
but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells describes it, "in the
making." Our human-ness is seen to lie not so much in what we are
individually, as in our relations to one another; and even that
individuality is but the result of our relations to one another. It is
in what we do and how we do it, rather than in what we are. Some,
philosophically inclined, exalt "being" over "doing." To them this
question may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is,'
without doing anything?"

Taken separately and physically, we are animals, _genus homo_; taken
socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real
history lies in the development of this human-ness.

Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goes
back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient
Egypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is here
called an Androcentric Culture. The history, such as it was, was made
and written by men.

The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was almost wholly
theirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-made
world. So general, so unbroken, has been this condition, that to
mention it arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law.
We have taken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, that
"mankind" meant men-kind, and the world was theirs.

Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a sex, "the sex," according
to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiar
to femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not
only not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspecies
told off for reproduction only."

This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr.
H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the
"Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutional
restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone
excuse or explain her existence." This is a peculiarly happy and
condensed expression of the relative position of women during our
androcentric culture. The man was accepted as the race type without one
dissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quite
disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused and
explained only as a female.

She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently,
volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library catalogue we may find
books upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic,
religious--all manner of books about women, as such. Even to-day in the
works of Marholm--poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find the
same perpetual discussion of women--as such.

This is a book about men--as such. It differentiates between the human
nature and the sex nature. It will not go so far as to allege man's
masculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his existence: but it
will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones,
and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridled
dominance of one sex.

We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result of giving
all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraordinary and
deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should have
all become "effeminate."

See how in our use of language the case is clearly shown. The
adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and
derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female,
connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas
"emasculate"--not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no
feminine analogue. "Virile"--manly, we oppose to "puerile"--childish,
and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir"--a man.

Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as the race
type, and put on a special termination to indicate "his female," as in
lion, lioness; leopard, leopardess; while all our human scheme of things
rests on the same tacit assumption; man being held the human type; woman
a sort of accompaniment aud subordinate assistant, merely essential to
the making of people.

She has held always the place of a preposition in relation to man. She
has been considered above him or below him, before him, behind him,
beside him, a wholly relative existence--"Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's
mother"--but never by any chance Sydney or Pembroke herself.

Acting on this assumption, all human standards have been based on male
characteristics, and when we wish to praise the work of a woman, we say
she has "a masculine mind."

It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal assumption. The
human mind has had a good many jolts since it began to think, but after
each upheaval it settles down as peacefully as the vine-growers on
Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as permanent ground.

What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and grow up
with, be it mental furniture or physical, we assume to be the order of
nature.

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as
almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort
to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of
the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those
who seek to change it.

Nevertheless, if the matter is one of importance, if the previous idea
was a palpable error, of large and evil effect, and if the new one is
true and widely important, the effort is worth making.

The task here undertaken is of this sort. It seeks to show that what we
have all this time called "human nature" and deprecated, was in great
part only male nature, and good enough in its place; that what we have
called "masculine" and admired as such, was in large part human, and
should be applied to both sexes: that what we have called "feminine" and
condemned, was also largely human and applicable to both. Our
androcentric culture is so shown to have been, and still to be, a
masculine culture in excess, and therefore undesirable.

In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be well to
explain how it can be that so wide and serious an error should have been
made by practically all men. The reason is simply that they were men.
They were males, avid saw women as females--and not otherwise.

So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads will say, "Of
course! How else are we to look at women except as females? They are
females, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are males unquestionably;
but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who was
asked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serve
her breakfast in bed--to have a man in her bed-chamber--and replied
sincerely, "Call you that thing there a man?"

The world is full of men, but their principal occupation is human work
of some sort; and women see in them the human distinction
preponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries her
coachman--long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect,
apparently; but in general women see the human creature most; the male
creature only when they love.

To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was male; and
the whole world of woman was the home; because she was female. She had
her prescribed sphere, strictly limited to her feminine occupations and
interests; he had all the rest of life; and not only so, but, having it,
insisted on calling it male.

This accounts for the general attitude of men toward the now rapid
humanization of women. From her first faint struggles toward freedom
and justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full economic and
political equality, each step has been termed "unfeminine" and resented
as an intrusion upon man's place and power. Here shows the need of our
new classification, of the three distinct fields of life--masculine,
feminine and human.

As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere," sharply defined and
quite different from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as sharply
defined and even more limited; but there remains a common sphere--that
of humanity, which belongs to both alike.

In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's movement," it was
sharply opposed on the ground that women would become "unsexed." Let us
note in passing that they have become unsexed in one particular, most
glaringly so, and that no one has noticed or objected to it.

As part of our androcentric culture we may point to the peculiar
reversal of sex characteristics which make the human female carry the
burden of ornament. She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted the
essentially masculine attribute of special sex-decoration; she does not
fight for her mate as yet, but she blooms forth as the peacock and bird
of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearing
masculine feathers to further her feminine ends.

Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's natural
work as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this end
being a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but human work
covers all our life outside of these specialties. Every handicraft,
every profession, every science, every art, all normal amusements and
recreations, all government, education, religion; the whole living world
of human achievement: all this is human.

That one sex should have monopolized all human activities, called them
"man's work," and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase
"Androcentric Culture."

COMMENT AND REVIEW

Why criticize?

Why does anybody criticize anything? And why does THE FORERUNNER
criticize--the things herein treated?

On examination, we find several sources of criticism. The earliest and
commonest is the mere expression of personal opinion, as is heard where
young persons are becoming acquainted, the voluble "I like this!" and
"Don't you like that?" and "Isn't such a thing horrid?" For hours do
the impressionable young exchange their ardent sentiments; and the same
may be heard from older persons in everyday discussion.

This form of criticism has its value. It serves to show, even
relentlessly to expose, the qualities and deficiencies of the critic.
What one "likes" merely shows what one is like.

The vitality dies out of it, however, when one learns two things; first,
that likings change with growth of character and new experience, and,
second, that few people are interested in an inventory of limitations.

Following this comes another painfully common source of criticism--the
desire to exhibit superiority. The aged are prone to this fault in
discussion of the young and their achievements. The elect in general
show it, seeking to prove to common people that these are not as they
are; the conservative rests his objection to anything new and different
on the same broad base; and the critic, the real, professional critic,
can hardly trust himself to approve warmly of anything, lest it weaken
his reputation. If he does, it must be something which is caviar to the
general.

Then comes that amiable desire to instruct and assist, born of parental
instinct, fostered by pedagogy, intrusted by St. Paul to the "husband at
home." Moved by this feeling, we point out the errors of our friends
and mark examination papers; and thus does the teacher of painting move
among his pupils and leave them in ranks of glimmering hope or dark
despair.

Another fruitful source of criticism is a natural wish to free one's
mind; as the hapless public sputters on the street, or in letters to the
papers, protesting against the stupidity and cruelty of its many
aggressors. Under this impulse bursts forth the chattering flood of
discussion after play or lecture, merely to relieve the pressure.

Then comes a very evil cause--the desire to give pain, to injure.
Certain persons, and publications, use their critical ability with great
effect to this end. In England it seems to be a sort of game, great
literary personages rush out into the open and belabor each other
mercilessly; while the public rejoices as at a prize-fight. We
sometimes see a newspaper offering its readers a form of entertainment
which is not even a fight, nor yet a prompt and needed execution, but a
sort of torture-chamber exhibition, where the dumb victim is vilified
and ridiculed, grilled and "roasted," to make an American holiday.

There is one more cause of criticism--the need of money. Some people
are hired to criticize others, the nature of their attentions wholly
dictated by the employer. A shadowy bridge is opened here, connecting
criticism with advertisement. Many cross it.

*

For any criticism to have value it must rest clearly and honestly upon a
definite point of view.

"The Toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth point goes.
The Butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that Toad."

If one elects, for instance, to criticize an illustration in
particular--or a particular illustration--or the present status of
popular illustration in general--the position of the critic must be
frankly chosen and firmly held. If it is that of the technician, either
the original artist or the reproducer or even the publisher, then a
given picture in a magazine may be discussed merely as a picture, as a
half-tone, or as a page effect, intelligently and competently. If the
purely aesthetic viewpoint is chosen, all the above considerations may
be waived and the given picture judged as frankly ugly, or as beautiful,
quite apart from its technique. If, again, the base of judgment is that
of the reader, in whose eyes an illustration should illustrate--i.e.,
give light, make clear the meaning of the text--then we look at a given
picture to see if it carries out the ideas expressed in the tale or
article, and value it by that.

On this base also stands the author, only one person, to be sure, as
compared with the multitude of readers, but not a dog, for all that.
The author, foaming at the mouth, remote and helpless, here makes common
ground with the reader and expects an illustration to illustrate.
Perhaps, we should say, "the intelligent reader"--leaving out such as
the young lady in the tale, who said they might read her anything, "if
it was illustrated by Christie."*

[*--This does not by any means deny intelligence to all appreciators of
Mr. Christie's work, but merely to such as select literature for the
pictures attached.]

THE FORERUNNER believes that it may voice the feelings of many writers
and more readers; almost all readers, in fact, if it here and now
records a protest against an all too frequent illustrative sin: where
the gentleman, or lady, who is engaged and paid to illustrate a story,
prefers to insert pictures of varying attractiveness which bear no
relation to the text. This is not illustration. It is not even honest
business. It does not deliver the goods paid for. It takes advantage
of author, publisher and public, and foists upon them all an art
exhibition which was not ordered.

To select a recent popular, easily obtainable, instance of vice and
virtue in illustration, let us take up the "American Magazine" for
August. Excellent work among the advertisements--there the artist is
compelled to "follow copy"; his employer will take no nonsense. That's
one reason why people like to look at them--the pictures are
intelligible. Admirable pictures by Worth Brehm to Stewart White's
story--perfect. You see the people, Mr. White's people, see them on the
page as you saw them in your mind, and better. Good drawing, and
_personal character_--those special people and not others. The insight
and appreciation shown in the frontispiece alone makes as fine an
instance of what illustration ought to be as need be given.

Those light sketches to the airy G. G. Letters are good, too--anything
more definite would not belong to that couple.

But Mr. Cyrus Cuneo shows small grasp of what Mr. Locke was writing
about in his "Moonlight Effect." The tailpiece, by somebody else, is
the best picture of the lot.

Mr. Leone Brackner does better in Jack London's story, though falling
far short of the extreme loathsomeness Mr. London heaps so thickly. J.
Scott Williams follows "Margherita's Soul" with a running accompaniment
and variations, in pleasant accord with the spirit of that compelling
tale. He gives more than the scene represented, gives it differently,
and yet gives it.

Mr. McCutcheon and George Fitch are also harmonious in clever fooling of
pen and pencil, and Thomas Fogarty, though by no means convincing, goes
well enough with Mr. O'Higgins' story, which is not convincing, either.
The hat and dress pictures are photographs, and do artificial justice to
their artificial subjects in Mrs. Woodrow's arraignment of the Fantastic
Feminine.

But--. Go to your library after, or send your ten cents for, or look up
on your own shelves, that August number, and turn to Lincoln Colcord's
story of "Anjer," to see what an illustrator dare do. Here's a story,
the merits of which need not be discussed, but in which great stress is
laid on a certain Malay Princess, the free nobility of whose savage love
healed the sick heart of an exhausted man. "I saw how beautiful she
was," says the narrator: "her breast was bare in a long slit, and
shadowed like the face of the pool." "The most glorious native woman of
the East I've ever seen." "She walked like a tiger, with a crouching
step of absolute grace." "Her eyes called as if they'd spoken words of
love: the beauty of her face was beyond speech--almost beyond thought."
Thus Mr. Colcord.

And how Mr. Townshend? It is on Page 334, Mr. Townshend's
"illustration." ("Whit way do we ca' it the Zoo?" "If it wasna' ca'd
the Zoo, what would we ca' it?") A bit of railing and a pillar is the
only concession to the scene described; that and the fact that there is
a man and a woman there. One more detail is granted--a forehead
ornament, as alleged. For the rest?

Since the picture is so unjust to the words of the author, can the words
of the critic do any justice to the picture? The man will do, as well
one man as another, apparently. The big blob of an object that seems to
have been suggested by a Gargantuan ginger jar, and to be put in for
tropical effect, as also a set of wooden bananas, may be forgiven.

But the Princess--the tigress--the free, graceful, passionate woman--the
beauty beyond speech. Look at it.

A crooked, crouching, awkward negroid type, a dress of absurd volume and
impossible outlines, the upper part a swathed bath towel, one stiff,
ugly arm hung helpless, one lifted and ending in a _hoof,_ a plain pig's
hoof; the head bent, chin sunk on chest like a hunchback's; and the
face--! One could forgive the gross, unusual ugliness; but why no hint
of interest in her lover? Why this expression as of a third generation
London pauper in a hospital? What explanation is there of this meagre,
morbid, deformed female in the midst of that story?

Frank incapacity on the part of an artist is possible. To try and try
and try again and utterly fail is possible. To write to the author and
say, "I cannot visualize your character, or express it, and must decline
to undertake the order," or to the editor and refuse the job, is
possible. But to take the order, to read the story (if he did read it),
to send in and accept pay for a picture like that--"Whit way would ye
ca' it?"

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

A passionate interest is shown by many persons in consulting anonymous
advisers through the columns of various publications. Their inquiries
are mainly as to small matters of etiquette, and the care of the
complexion.

In one of the current women's papers we find such questions as these:
"When one is introduced, how does one acknowledge the introduction?
Must it be by a mention of the weather? How should one receive a small
gift?" (x) All these by one breathless inquirer.

Another asks pathetically: "Will you tell me how soon after a husband's
death it is permitted to a widow to return formal calls? What is the
present form of visiting cards for a widow?" (y)

Another rudderless ship, in a somewhat less recent issue of a very
popular woman's paper, writes: "I am wearing mourning. In the hot
weather I find the veil very heavy and close, and wish to throw it back.
What shall I do?" (z)

These are apparently bona fide questions, but in most cases they are
answered in a style too palpably oracular. If the questioners are
genuine and want help they get precious little. If it is merely a game,
it seems rather a flat one. But the popularity of the pastime
continues.

The Forerunner will give no answers to foolish questions; unless at
peril of the asker. But to sincere inquirers, who are interested in
some moot point of conduct, some balance of conflicting duties, honest
attention will be given, and their questions answered as sincerely.

The intention is to promote discussion of the real problems of life, and
to apply to them the new standards afforded by the larger knowledge and
deeper religious sense of to-day.

If any of the above questions were sent to this office they would be
thus dismissed:

(x) Read "How To Do It," by E. E. Hale. Learn to be sincere; have real
feelings and express them honestly.

(y) If you are truly prostrated by grief you cannot return calls. If
you are able--and like to do it--what are you afraid of? Whose
"permission" are you asking? See answer to x.

(z) Mourning is a relic of barbarism, kept up by women because of their
retarded social development. But if you must wear a heavy veil and wish
to throw it back--why don't you?

These persons would be displeased and not write again. Truly. Such
questions are not wanted by The Forerunner. They would discontinue
their subscription. Doubtless. But this is a waste of anxiety, for
such would never have subscribed for The Forerunner in the first place.

Suppose, however, that a question like this is sent in:

"I am a girl of twenty. My mother is an invalid. My father is in
business difficulties. They want me to marry an old friend of
father's--a good man, but forty years older then I am. Is it my duty to
marry him--for their sake?" (B)

Answer. (B) Marriage is not an institution for the support of parents,
or the settling of business difficulties. If you loved that old man you
would not be asking advice. To marry a man you do not love is immoral.
Marriage is to serve the best interests of children and to give
happiness to the contracting parties. If your parents need your
financial aid go to work and give them your earnings, but do not make a
business of matrimony.

Or again: Query. "My mother is a widow living on a moderate income.
She has two married children, but does not like to live with them. I am
a college graduate and wish to work at a profession. She says it is not
necessary for me to work, and wants me to live with her--says she needs
me, claims my filial duty. Is this right?" (F)

Answer. (F) No, it is dead wrong. Parental duty is a natural
obligation--not a loan. Filial duty is the same from son and daughter.
You owe your mother care and service if needed, just as your brother
would. She has no more right to prevent your going to work than if you
were a son. By all means live with her if you both like it, but live
your own life. You have a duty of citizenship as well as of
daughtership.

Or again: Query. "My wife is spending more of my income on dress than I
can afford. How can I stop her?" (G)

There is not room to answer this in this issue.

THANKSONG

Thankful are we for life
And the joy of living.
Baby-pleasure of taking;
Mother-glory of giving.

Thankful are we for light
And the joy of seeing.
Stir of emotion strong,
And the peace of being.

Thankful are we for power,
And the pride ensuing;
Baby-pleasure of having,
Father-glory of doing.

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THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon;
dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

_What is it For?_ It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage
and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
make.

_What is it about?_ It is about people, principles, and the questions
of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives
a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

_Is it a Woman's magazine?_ It will treat all three phases of our
existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true
place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important
citizen.

_Is it a Socialist Magazine?_ It is a magazine for humanity, and
humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is
part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious
humanity is to promote Socialization.

_Why is it published?_ It is published to express ideas which need a
special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons
interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser."
The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this
authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will
be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual
experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description
command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be
useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own
statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be
true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette,
fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be
answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
_____ 19___ to _____ 19___

__________

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C A L E N D U L A

CHILDREN CEASE TO CRY FOR IT.

This is a gratuitous advertisement, benefitting

a) The Child; whose pain stops;

b) The Mother; who doesn't have to hear him cry;

c) The Nearest Druggist--a little.

CALENDULA is a good standard old drug--made of marigolds--in the
_materia medica._ You buy a little bottle of tincture of calendula, and
keep it on the shelf. Nobody will drink it by mistake--it doesn't taste
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A R A W W O U N D

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
OWNER AND PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 2
DECEMBER, 1909
The Charlton Company, 67 Wall Street, New York
Copyright for 1909, C. P. Gilman

LOVE

Not the child-god of our most childish past,
Nor sympathy, nor worship, passionless;
Nor gratitude, nor tenderest caress:
Nor the post-mortal glamor priests have cast
With "This to hope! Surrender what thou hast!"
These are but parts and can but partly bless;
We in our new-born common consciousness
Are learning Law and Life and Love at last.

The age-old secret of the sphinx's holding,
Incarnate triumph, infinitely strong;
The mother's majesty, grown wide and long,
In the full power and fire of life's unfolding;
The conscious splendor and ripe joy thereof--
Glad world-wide, life-long service--this is Love!

ACCORDING TO SOLOMON

"'He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favor than he that
flattereth with his tongue,'" said Mr. Solomon Bankside to his wife
Mary.

"Its the other way with a woman, I think;" she answered him, "you might
put that in."

"Tut, tut, Molly," said he; "'Add not unto his words,'--do not speak
lightly of the wisdom of the great king."

"I don't mean to, dear, but--when you hear it all the time"--

"'He that turneth away his ear from the law, even his prayer shall be an
abomination,'" answered Mr. Bankside.

"I believe you know every one of those old Proverbs by heart," said his
wife with some heat. "Now that's not disrespectful!--they _are_
old!--and I do wish you'd forget some of them!"

He smiled at her quizzically, tossing back his heavy silver-gray hair
with the gesture she had always loved. His eyes were deep blue and
bright under their bushy brows; and the mouth was kind--in its iron way.
"I can think of at least three to squelch you with, Molly," said he,
"but I won't."

"O I know the one you want! 'A continual dropping in a very rainy day
and a contentions woman are alike!' I'm _not_ contentious, Solomon!"

"No, you are not," he frankly admitted. "What I really had in mind was
this--'A prudent wife is from the Lord,' and 'He that findeth a wife
findeth a good thing; and obtaineth favor of the Lord.'"

She ran around the table in the impulsive way years did not alter, and
kissed him warmly.

"I'm not scolding you, my dear," he continued: "but if you had all the
money you'd like to give away--there wouldn't be much left!"

"But look at what you spend on me!" she urged.

"That's a wise investment--as well as a deserved reward," her husband
answered calmly. "'There is that scattereth and yet increaseth,' you
know, my dear; 'And there is that withholdeth more than is meet--and it
tendeth to poverty!' Take all you get my dear--its none too good for
you."

He gave her his goodby kiss with special fondness, put on his heavy
satin-lined overcoat and went to the office.

Mr. Solomon Bankside was not a Jew; though his last name suggested and
his first seemed to prove it; also his proficiency in the Old Testament
gave color to the idea. No, he came from Vermont; of generations of
unbroken New England and old English Puritan ancestry, where the
Solomons and Isaacs and Zedekiahs were only mitigated by the Standfasts
and Praise-the-Lords. Pious, persistent pigheaded folk were they, down
all the line.

His wife had no such simple pedigree. A streak of Huguenot blood she
had (some of the best in France, though neither of them knew that), a
grandmother from Albany with a Van to her name; a great grandmother with
a Mac; and another with an O'; even a German cross came in somewhere.
Mr. Bankside was devoted to genealogy, and had been at some pains to dig
up these facts--the more he found the worse he felt, and the lower ran
his opinion of Mrs. Bankside's ancestry.

She had been a fascinating girl; pretty, with the dash and piquancy of
an oriole in a May apple-tree; clever and efficient in everything her
swift hands touched; quite a spectacular housekeeper; and the sober,
long-faced young downeasterner had married her with a sudden decision
that he often wondered about in later years. So did she.

What he had not sufficiently weighed at the time, was her spirit of
incorrigible independence, and a light-mindedness which, on maturer
judgment, he could almost term irreligious. His conduct was based on
principle, all of it; built firmly into habit and buttressed by
scriptural quotations. Hers seemed to him as inconsequent as the flight
of a moth. Studying it, in his solemn conscientious way, in the light
of his genealogical researches, he felt that all her uncertainties were
accounted for, and that the error was his--in having married too many
kinds of people at once.

They had been, and were, very happy together none the less: though
sometimes their happiness was a little tottery. This was one of the
times. It was the day after Christmas, and Mrs. Bankside entered the
big drawing room, redolent of popcorn and evergreen, and walked slowly
to the corner where the fruits of yesterday were lovingly arranged; so
few that she had been able to give--so many that she had received.

There were the numerous pretty interchangeable things given her by her
many friends; "presents," suitable to any lady. There were the few
perfectly selected ones given by the few who knew her best. There was
the rather perplexing gift of Mrs. MacAvelly. There was her brother's
stiff white envelope enclosing a check. There were the loving gifts of
children and grand-children.

Finally there was Solomon's.

It was his custom to bestow upon her one solemn and expensive object, a
boon as it were, carefully selected, after much thought and balancing of
merits; but the consideration was spent on the nature of the gift---not
on the desires of the recipient. There was the piano she could not
play, the statue she did not admire, the set of Dante she never read,
the heavy gold bracelet, the stiff diamond brooch--and all the others.
This time it was a set of sables, costing even more than she imagined.

Christmas after Christmas had these things come to her; and she stood
there now, thinking of that procession of unvalued valuables, with an
expression so mixed and changeful it resembled a kaleidoscope. Love for
Solomon, pride in Solomon, respect for Solomon's judgment and power to
pay, gratitude for his unfailing kindness and generosity, impatience
with his always giving her this one big valuable permanent thing, when
he knew so well that she much preferred small renewable cheap ones; her
personal dislike of furs, the painful conviction that brown was not
becoming to her--all these and more filled the little woman with what
used to be called "conflicting emotions."

She smoothed out her brother's check, wishing as she always did that it
had come before Christmas, so that she might buy more presents for her
beloved people. Solomon liked to spend money on her--in his own way;
but he did not like to have her spend money on him--or on anyone for
that matter. She had asked her brother once, if he would mind sending
her his Christmas present beforehand.

"Not on your life, Polly!" he said. "You'd never see a cent of it! You
can't buy 'em many things right on top of Christmas, and it'll be gone
long before the next one."

She put the check away and turned to examine her queerest gift. Upon
which scrutiny presently entered the donor.

"I'm ever so much obliged, Benigna," said Mrs. Bankside. "You know how
I love to do things. It's a loom, isn't it? Can you show me how it
works?"

"Of course I can, my dear; that's just what I ran in for--I was afraid
you wouldn't know. But you are so clever with your hands that I'm sure
you'll enjoy it. I do."

Whereat Mrs. MacAvelly taught Mrs. Bankside the time-honored art of
weaving. And Mrs. Bankside enjoyed it more than any previous handicraft
she had essayed.

She did it well, beginning with rather coarse and simple weaves; and
gradually learning the finer grades of work. Despising as she did the
more modern woolens, she bought real wool yarn of a lovely red--and made
some light warm flannelly stuff in which she proceeded to rapturously
enclose her little grandchildren.

Mr. Bankside warmly approved, murmuring affectionately, "'She seeketh
wool and flax--she worketh willingly with her hands.'"

He watched little Bob and Polly strenuously "helping" the furnace man to
clear the sidewalk, hopping about like red-birds in their new caps and
coats; and his face beamed with the appositeness of his quotation, as he
remarked, "She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her
household are clothed with scarlet!" and he proffered an extra, wholly
spontaneous kiss, which pleased her mightily.

"You dear man!" she said with a hug; "I believe you'd rather find a
proverb to fit than a gold mine!"

To which he triumphantly responded: "'Wisdom is better than rubies; and
all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.'"

She laughed sweetly at him. "And do you think wisdom stopped with that
string of proverbs?"

"You can't get much beyond it," he answered calmly. "If we lived up to
all there is in that list we shouldn't be far out, my dear!"

Whereat she laughed again smoothed his gray mane, and kissed him in the
back of his neck. "You _dear_ thing!" said Mrs. Bankside.

She kept herself busy with the new plaything as he called it. Hands
that had been rather empty were now smoothly full. Her health was
better, and any hint of occasional querulousness disappeared entirely;
so that her husband was moved to fresh admiration of her sunny temper,
and quoted for the hundredth time, "'She openeth her mouth with wisdom,
and in her tongue is the law of kindness.'"

Mrs. MacAvelly taught her to make towels. But Mrs. Bankside's skill
outstripped hers; she showed inventive genius and designed patterns of
her own. The fineness and quality of the work increased; and she
joyfully replenished her linen chest with her own handiwork.

"I tell you, my dear," said Mrs. MacAvelly, "if you'd be willing to sell
them you could get almost any price for those towels. With the initials
woven in. I know I could get you orders--through the Woman's Exchange,
you know!"

Mrs. Bankside was delighted. "What fun!" she said. "And I needn't
appear at all?"

"No, you needn't appear at all--do let me try."

So Mrs. Bankside made towels of price, soft, fine, and splendid, till
she was weary of them; and in the opulence of constructive genius fell
to devising woven belts of elaborate design.

These were admired excessively. All her women friends wanted one, or
more; the Exchange got hold of it, there was a distinct demand; and
finally Mrs. MacAvelly came in one day with a very important air and a
special order.

"I don't know what you'll think, my dear," she said, "but I happen to
know the Percy's very well--the big store people, you know; and Mr.
Percy was talking about those belts of yours to me;--of course he didn't
know they are yours; but he said (the Exchange people told him I knew,
you see) he said, 'If you can place an order with that woman, I can take
all she'll make and pay her full price for them. Is she poor?' he
asked. 'Is she dependent on her work?' And I told him, 'Not
altogether.' And I think he thinks it an interesting case! Anyhow,
there's the order. Will you do it?'

Mrs. Bankside was much excited. She wanted to very much, but dreaded
offending her husband. So far she had not told him of her quiet trade
in towels; but hid and saved this precious money--the first she had ever
earned.

The two friends discussed the pros and cons at considerable length; and
finally with some perturbation, she decided to accept the order.

"You'll never tell, Benigna!" she urged. "Solomon would never forgive
me, I'm afraid."

"Why of course I won't--you needn't have a moment's fear of it. You
give them to me--I'll stop with the carriage you see; and I take them to
the Exchange--and he gets them from there."

"It seems like smuggling!" said Mrs. Bankside delightedly. "I always
did love to smuggle!"

"They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs.
MacAvelly suggested.

"Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em--nor God--nor
nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by
some men one day and changed by some more the next?"

"Bless us, Polly! Do you talk to Mr. Bankside like that?"

"Indeed I don't!" answered her hostess, holding out a particularly
beautiful star-patterned belt to show to advantage. "There are lots of
things I don't say to Mr. Bankside--'A man of understanding holdeth his
peace' you know--or a woman."

She was a pretty creature, her hair like that of a powdered marchioness,
her rosy checks and firm slight figure suggesting a charmer in Dresden
china.

Mrs. MacAvelly regarded her admiringly. "'Where there is no wood the
fire goeth out; so where there is no tale bearer the strife ceaseth,'"
she proudly offered, "I can quote that much myself."

But Mrs. Bankside had many misgivings as she pursued her audacious way;
the busy hours flying away from her, and the always astonishing checks
flying toward her in gratifying accumulation. She came down to her
well-planned dinners gracious and sweet; always effectively dressed;
spent the cosy quiet evenings with her husband, or went out with him,
with a manner of such increased tenderness and charm that his heart
warmed anew to the wife of his youth; and he even relented a little
toward her miscellaneous ancestors.

As the days shortened and darkened she sparkled more and more; with
little snatches of song now and then; gay ineffectual strumming on the
big piano; sudden affectionate darts at him, with quaintly distributed
caresses.

"Molly!" said he, "I don't believe you're a day over twenty! What makes
you act so?"

"Don't you like it, So?" she asked him. That was the nearest she ever
would approximate to his name.

He did like it, naturally, and even gave her an extra ten dollars to buy
Christmas presents with; while he meditated giving her an electric
runabout;--to her!--who was afraid of a wheelbarrow!

When the day arrived and the family were gathered together, Mrs.
Bankside, wearing the diamond brooch, the gold bracelet, the point lace
handkerchief--everything she could carry of his accumulated
generosity--and such an air of triumphant mystery that the tree itself
was dim beside her; handed out to her astonished relatives such an
assortment of desirable articles that they found no words to express
their gratitude.

"Why, _Mother!"_ said Jessie, whose husband was a minister and salaried
as such, "Why, _Mother_--how did you know we wanted just that kind of a
rug!--and a sewing-machine _too!_ And this lovely suit--and--and--why
_Mother!"_

But her son-in-law took her aside and kissed her solemnly. He had
wanted that particular set of sociological books for years--and never
hoped to get them; or that bunch of magazines either.

Nellie had "married rich;" she was less ostentatiously favored; but she
had shown her thankfulness a week ago--when her mother had handed her a
check.

"Sh, sh! my dear!" her mother had said, "Not one word. I know! What
pleasant weather we're having."

This son-in-law was agreeably surprised, too; and the other relatives,
married and single; while the children rioted among their tools and
toys, taking this Christmas like any other, as a season of unmitigated
joy.

Mr. Solomon Bankside looked on with growing amazement, making
computations in his practiced mind; saying nothing whatever. Should he
criticize his wife before others?

But when his turn came--when gifts upon gifts were offered to him--sets
of silken handkerchiefs (he couldn't bear the touch of a silk
handkerchief!), a cabinet of cards and chips and counters of all sorts
(he never played cards), an inlaid chess-table and ivory men (the game
was unknown to him), a gorgeous scarf-pin (he abominated jewelery), a
five pound box of candy (he never ate it), his feelings so mounted
within him, that since he would not express, and could not repress them,
he summarily went up stairs to his room.

She found him there later, coming in blushing, smiling, crying a little
too--like a naughty but charming child.

He swallowed hard as he looked at her; and his voice was a little
strained.

"I can take a joke as well as any man, Molly. I guess we're square on
that. But--my dear!--where did you get it?"

"Earned it," said she, looking down, and fingering her lace
handkerchief.

"Earned it! My wife, earning money! How--if I may ask?"

"By my weaving, dear--the towels and the belts--I sold 'em. Don't be
angry--nobody knows--my name didn't appear at all! Please don't be
angry!--It isn't wicked, and it was such fun!"

"No--it's not wicked, I suppose," said he rather grimly. "But it is
certainly a most mortifying and painful thing to me--most
unprecedented."

"Not so unprecedented, Dear," she urged, "Even the woman you think most
of did it! Don't you remember 'She maketh fine linen and selleth
it--and delivereth girdles unto the merchants!'"

Mr. Bankside came down handsomely.

He got used to it after a while, and then he became proud of it. If a
friend ventured to suggest a criticism, or to sympathize, he would
calmly respond, "'The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so
that he shall have no need of spoil. Give her of the fruit of her
hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.'"

AN OBVIOUS BLESSING

We are told, on the authority of the Greatest Sociologist, that it is
more blessed to give than to receive.

So patent and commonplace a fact as this ought to meet with general
acceptance. Anyone can see that it is so, by a little study or by less
practice. To give implies having. You must be in possession before you
can give. To receive implies wanting, at its best--to receive what you
do not want is distinctly unpleasant. To have is more blessed than to
want. Of course it is.

To give gratifies several natural feelings; the mother-instinct of
supplying needs, the pride of superior power and the generosity; and, if
you are a sordid soul, the desire to "lay up treasure in heaven" or, as
the Buddhists frankly put it--to "acquire merit."

None of these pleasures pertain to receiving. There is a certain
humiliation about it always, a childish sense of dependence and
inferiority. Only children can continuously receive without
degradation; and as soon as they begin to realize life at all they
delight to give as we all do. "Let me help!" says the child, and plans
birthday presents for mama as eagerly as he hopes for them himself.

The instinct of giving is the pressure of the surplus; the natural outgo
of humanity, its fruit. We are not mere receptacles, we are productive
engines, of immense capacity; and, having produced, we must distribute
the product. To give, naturally, is to shed, to bear fruit; a healthy
and pleasurable process.

What has confused us so long on this subject? Why have we been so blind
to this glaring truth that we have stultified our giving instinct and
made of it an abnormal process called "Charity," or a much restricted
pleasure only used in families or at Christmas time?

Two things have combined to prevent our easy acceptance of this visible
truth; one the time-honored custom of "sacrifice," and the other our
ignorance of social economics.

Sacrificing is not giving. That black remnant of lowest savagery dates
back to the time when a pursuing beast was placated by the surrender of
something, or somebody; and a conqueror bought off by tribute. The
medicine man made play with this race habit, and gross idols were
soothed and placated by sacrifices--on which the medicine man lived.
Always the best and finest were taken naturally by the hungry beast; as
naturally by the greedy conqueror; and not unnaturally by the dependent
priesthood. Sacrificing is a forced surrender with personal hope as the
reason. It is not giving.

Our economic ignorance and confusion is partly based on this same old
period of cruelty and darkness. Labor was extorted as the price of
life; and the fruits of labor taken by force through warring centuries.
A guarded and grudging system of exchange gradually developed; the
robbing instinct slowly simmering down to legally limited extortion; but
each party surrendering his goods reluctantly, and only with the purpose
of gaining more than he lost. Here also is the basic spirit of
sacrifice--to get something now or in the far future--always the trading
spirit at the bottom. Selling is not giving.

The real basis of giving is motherhood; and that is merely the orderly
expression of life's progressive force. Living forms must
increase--spread--grow--improve. The biological channel for this force
is through mother-love; and, later, father-love. The sociological
channel is in the pouring flood of productive activity, which fills the
world with human fruit--the million things we make and do.

This ceaseless output is not dragged out of us as a sacrifice, it is not
produced by want and hunger and the grasping spirit of exchange. It is
the natural expression of social energy; blossoming in every form of
art, stirring the brain to ceaseless action, filling the world with the
rich fruit of human handiwork.

Having produced, we must distribute--we must discharge, we must _give._

To be human is to be a producer, to make, to do, to have some output
either in goods or services whereby the sum of welfare is increased. To
have this productive energy and to use it normally, is to give. Not to
have it, not to use it, is not to be human--to be a minus quantity; to
live parasitically on the labor of others--to receive.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

STEPS

I was a slave, because I could not see
That work for one another is our law;
I hated law. I work? I would be free!
Therefore the heavy law laid hands on me
And I was forced to work in slavery--
Until I saw.

I was a hireling, for I could not see
That work was natural as the breath I drew,
Natural? I would not work without the fee!
So nature laid her heavy hands on me
And I was forced by fear of poverty--
Until I knew.

Now I am free. Life is new-seen, recast
To work is to enjoy, to love, to live!
The shame and pain of slavery are past,
Dishonor and extortion follow fast,
I am not owned, nor hired, full-born at last,
My power I give.

WHY WE HONESTLY FEAR SOCIALISM

A peaceable elderly Englishman of a bald and scholarly aspect, inquired,
following a lecture on Socialism, "Will the speaker state in one
sentence what Socialism is?" He wore an air of mild gentlemanly
triumph; apparently imagining that he had demanded the impossible.

But the speaker, seeming unconscious of any difficulty replied,
"Certainly; Socialism is the public ownership of all natural monopolies
and the means of production."

This simple definition is advanced to start with, that we may know what
we are talking about. This is the essence of Socialism--public
ownership of public things; the real point at issue being "What things
are public?"

The vast majority of us do not yet understand this easy and clear
definition; and no wonder; for the Socialists themselves are for the
most part so lost in grief over the sufferings of the poor and in rage
over the misbehavior of the rich, that they find it hard to speak
gently. Most of us, having but vague ideas of Socialism, fear it on
several grounds, some of them easily removable as mere mistakes; others
requiring careful treatment.

The mistakes are these:

ERROR I. "Socialism will abolish private property."

ANSWER. Quite wrong. It will do no such thing. You are thinking of
Communism. The early Communists, like the early Christians, held all
things in common, but Socialism urges no such doctrine. It does,
however, restrict our definition of what is private property; just as
was done when human slavery was abolished.

Slavery was once universal, and still exists In many countries. It was
held legal and honest to personally own human beings--they were
property. In our great civil contest of half a century since, the
north--from a southern point of view--confiscated property when the
slaves were freed. But from the northern point of view the slave was
not property at all. This is a very vivid instance of change of opinion
on property rights. Such "rights" are wholly of our own making; and
change from age to age.

Parents once held property rights in children and men "owned" their
wives; they could be punished, imprisoned, sold--even killed, at will of
the owner. The larger public sense has long since said, "Women and
children are not private property."

Laws about property are not God's laws; not Nature's laws; they are just
rules and regulations people make from time to time according to their
standards of justice. There is nothing novel in proposing to change
them--they have often been changed. There is nothing immoral or
dangerous in changing them; it is constantly done in all legislatures,
in varying degree, as when private estates are "condemned" for public
use.

Socialism advances the idea that private property rights do not
legitimately apply to public necessities like coal, water, oil and land.
As a matter of fact we do not really "own" land now--we only rent it of
the government, calling our rent "taxes." If we do not pay our rent the
government gets it again, like any other owner.

The utmost restriction of private property under Socialism leaves us
still every article of personal use and pleasure. One may still "own"
land by paying the government for it as now; with such taxation,
however, as would make it very expensive to own too much! One may own
one's house and all that is in it; one's clothes and tools and
decorations; one's horses, carriages and automobiles; one's flying
machines--presently. All "personal property" remains in our personal
hands.

But no man or group of men could own the country's coal and decide how
much the public can have, and what we must pay for it. Private holding
of public property would be abolished.

ERROR 2. Socialism would reduce us all to a dead level.

ANSWER. Quite wrong. Eating at the same table in the same family does
not reduce brothers and sisters to the same level; some remain far
smarter and stronger than others. By a wiser system of education we may
greatly increase the difference in people--Socialism would not hinder
it. A higher average level of income--which is what Socialism ensures,
will give people a chance to differ more than they do now. Our
machine-like educational system, long hours of labor, specialized
monotony of mill work, and "the iron law of wages" do tend to reduce us
to a dead level. Socialism does not.

ERROR 3. Socialists are atheists.

ANSWER. How anyone can say this when they know of the immense
organization of Christian Socialists is amazing; but then it is always
amazing to see how queerly people think. Some Socialists are atheists.
So are some monarchists and some republicans. A Socialist may be an
atheist, or a homeopathist, or a Holy Roller--it has nothing to do with
Socialism.

ERROR 4. Socialists are immoral.

ANSWER. Again--some are; but so are some other people. The immorality
of which we hear most in the papers is by no means that of Socialists;
but of most prominent capitalists.

ERROR 5. Socialism is unnatural--you must "alter human nature" before
it would be possible.

ANSWER. This is a very common position, based like most of the
foregoing, on lack of understanding. It assumes that Socialism requires
a state of sublime unselfishness and mutual deference, in which all men
are willing to work for nothing. But why assume this? It is no product
of Socialism. Our socialistic public parks and libraries do not
presuppose that people shall be angels. They may tend to make them
such, but the progress is not rapid enough to alarm us. In regard to
this particular error we should learn that Socialism is not a totally
new and different scheme of things; but a gradual and legitimate
extension of previous tendencies. Human nature is socialistic--and is
progressively extending socialism.

ERROR 5. Socialism will pay every one alike and so destroy the
incentive of personal ambition.

ANSWER. This idea of equal payment is not Socialism. Some socialists
hold it--more do not. The essential idea of public ownership and
management of public property does not include this notion of equal
payment.

ERROR 7. Socialism will destroy competition. Competition, most of us
believe, "is the life of trade;" in other words we are supposed to work,
not merely to get something for ourselves, but to get ahead of other
people.

ANSWER. Admitting that we do; admitting that such an incentive is
useful; the simple answer is that Socialism would not destroy
competition.

Even in financial reward some would still be paid more than others; and
far beyond this lies the larger competition for fame and glory and
public esteem, which has always moved men more strongly than the love of
money. This remains always open.

MAIN ERROR. Passing over all these minor objections, due to mere
ignorance and easily understood, we come to the one major objection,
honestly held by intelligent people; that under Socialism people would
not work. This is why so many good and intelligent persons do honestly
distrust and fear it. Their position is this:

PREMISE A. Work must be done to keep civilization going. Work is done
by individuals in order to get something they want. Work would not be
done by anyone without the immediate stimulus of personal desire.

PREMISE B. Socialism, in some mysterious way will supply the needs of
the people gratuitously.

CONCLUSION. The people being so provided for would not work. Then
follows the downfall of civilization.

This is the honest opinion of the individualist, the older economist,
and is entitled to respect and fair answer.

If the premises were correct the terrible conclusion would be correct,
and the Socialist position visionary and dangerous. Of course people
are afraid of anything that controverts the laws of economics and human
nature--they ought to be. But are those premises correct?

To remove the easiest one first let us observe the absurdity of the
idea, that Socialism will provide for people without their working.
Provide them with what, pray? All wealth is produced by human
labor--there is no socialist patent for drawing bread and circuses from
the sky. People must always and forever work for what they have, and
have in proportion to the quantity and quality of their work.

So thoroughly is this true that the socialist grieves to see so many
people living to-day without working; receiving wealth out of all
proportion to their usefulness. If this was common to all of us it
would mean the downfall of civilization. As we live now a great many
people work too hard, too long, under unsanitary conditions, a sort of
living sacrifice to the rest of the world; and a few people do visibly
and ostentatiously consume and waste the very things the workers so
painfully lack.

Socialism claims to ensure decent payment for all labor, and see that we
all receive it--all of us; not the same for everyone; but enough for
everyone. Further, Socialism claims that by such procedure the quantity
and quality of human work would be improved; that more wealth would be
produced--far more.

By thus removing Premise B, Premise A becomes a _non sequitur._ We
will, however, remove this also, to make a clean sweep.

It is not true that work is only done in order to get something. Some
work is done that way by some people. But it is not the only kind of
work--and they are not the only kind of people. Even the savage, having
exerted himself to get his dinner, and having had his dinner, and being,
in a small way, human, begins to exert himself further to decorate his
tools and weapons, his canoes and totem poles--because he likes to.
Nobody pays him for it. He enjoys the act of doing it, and the results.

The reason any ordinary man prefers any one kind of work to another is
that he experiences a certain pleasure in the performance of certain
actions--more than others. He is beginning to specialize.

The reason the highly specialized social servant, artist, teacher,
preacher, scientific student, true physician, inventor, chooses his
work, follows it often under disadvantages; and in the case of the
enthusiast, even under conditions of danger, pain and death--is that he
likes that kind of work, enjoys doing it, indeed _has to do it_--is
uncomfortable if prevented.

This is a social instinct which our earlier economists have not
recognized. It is proven an instinct by the fact that children have
it--all normal children. They like any kind of ordinary work, want to
learn how, want to help, long before they attach any idea of gain to the
labor.

The little girl in the kitchen wants to make cookies--as well as eat
them; longs to print little figures around the pies, and then hold the
plate on poised spread fingers and trim off that long broken ribbon of
superfluous pastry--wants to do things, as well as to have things. The
one instinct is as natural as the other.

The reasons so many of us to-day hate and despise work, avoid it, give
it up as soon as possible, are simple and clear. First because of the
cruel difficulties with which we have loaded what should be a
pleasure--the monotony, the long hours, the disagreeable surroundings,
the danger and early death, and the grossly insufficient pay. Any
normal boy enjoys working with carpenter's tools, or blacksmith's tools;
enjoys running a machine; but when such work is saddled with the above
conditions, he does not like it. Of course. It is not the work we are
averse to, it is what goes with it;--difficulties of our own making.

Further; besides the physical disadvantages, we have loaded this great
natural process of human labor with a mass of superstitions and
degrading lies. The lazy old orientals called it a curse! Work, a
curse! Work; which is the essential process of human life; man's
natural function and means of growth!

We have despised it because women did it. Glory to the women--without
them we should have had no industry. We have despised it because slaves
did it. Glory to the slaves! They built the pyramids--not Cheops.
They built every one of the marvelous relics and ruins of the past--the
slaves built Athens!

We despise it now because the low and ignorant do it. If there was ever
an instance of consummate folly, of churlish ingratitude, it is our
general attitude toward work and the workers. Here are three millions
of laboring benefactors; feeding us; clothing us; building our houses;
spinning and weaving and sewing for us;--hewing wood and drawing
water;--keeping the world alive and moving; and we look down on the work
and the workers. As we are not really brutes and fools, how is this
absurd position to be accounted for?

By that old fallacy of Premise A. "They are only doing it for
themselves," we say. "They are paid for what they do. They wouldn't do
it if they weren't paid for it!" That is the vital core of the real
opposition to Socialism, this erroneous economic idea about work.

If that can ever be changed, if we can look at work with new eyes, then
we can look at Socialism with new eyes too; and not be afraid. Then
cautiously and rationally, we shall say:

"So this new system of yours proposes to increase human wealth, does it?
To promote and develop all kinds of legitimate work and to distribute
the product so as to improve the people? That sounds pretty good to me.
But how do you know you can do it? I'm from Missouri myself--you'll
have to show me."

And then perhaps our wiser Socialists will appeal to the people as a
whole, of every grade and class; and teach the natural orderly
development of this simple and practical system of economics; teach its
splendid benefits to all classes; and the methods of its legitimate and
gradual introduction; by careful massing of the facts; by visible proof
of things already accomplished. They must show us that we are not
facing a great leap in the dark, but clear straight steps in the light,
in the orderly progress of social evolution.

CHILD LABOR

The children in the Poor House
May die of many an ill,
But the Poor House does not profit
By their labor in the mill!

The children in the Orphanage
Wear raiment far from fine,
But no Orphanage is financed
By child labor in a mine.

The Cruel Law may send them
To Reform School's iron sway,
But it does not set small children
To hard labor by the day.

Only the Loving Family,
Which we so much admire,
Is willing to support itself
On little children's hire.

Only the Human Father,
A man, with power to think,
Will take from little children
The price of food and drink.

Only the Human Mother--
Degraded, helpless thing!
Will make her little children work
And live on what they bring!

No fledgling feeds the father-bird!
No chicken feeds the hen!
No kitten mouses for the cat--
This glory is for men.

We are the Wisest, Strongest Race--
Loud my our praise be sung!--
The only animal alive
That lives upon its young!

We make the poverty that takes
The lives of babies so.
We can awake! rebuild! remake!--
And let our children grow!

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER II.

AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER

The brooding bird fulfills her task,
Or she-bear lean and brown;
All parent beasts see duty true,
All parent beasts their duty do,
We are the only kind that asks
For duty upside down.

The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning
slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak
pricked the dry silence wearingly. Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled,
heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums.
Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty
eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual
shade to the house.

It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern
states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers. For no
other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be
repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape.
There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted
easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served
as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.

The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are;
minus the hint of cosiness given by even a fireless stove; the little
bedrooms baked under the roof; only the kitchen spoke of human living,
and the living it portrayed was not, to say the least, joyous. It was
clean, clean with a cleanness that spoke of conscientious labor and
unremitting care. The zinc mat under the big cook-stove was scoured to
a dull glimmer, while that swart altar itself shone darkly from its
daily rubbing.

There was no dust nor smell of dust; no grease spots, no litter
anywhere. But the place bore no atmosphere of contented pride, as does
a Dutch, German or French kitchen, it spoke of Labor, Economy and
Duty--under restriction.

In the dead quiet of the afternoon Diantha and her mother sat there
sewing. The sun poured down through the dangling eucalyptus leaves.
The dry air, rich with flower odors, flowed softly in, pushing the white
sash curtains a steady inch or two. Ee-errr!--Ee-errr!--came the faint
whine of the windmill.

To the older woman rocking in her small splint chair by the rose-draped
window, her thoughts dwelling on long dark green grass, the shade of
elms, and cows knee-deep in river-shallows; this was California--hot,
arid, tedious in endless sunlight--a place of exile.

To the younger, the long seam of the turned sheet pinned tightly to her
knee, her needle flying firmly and steadily, and her thoughts full of
pouring moonlight through acacia boughs and Ross's murmured words, it
was California--rich, warm, full of sweet bloom and fruit, of boundless
vitality, promise, and power--home!

Mrs. Bell drew a long weary sigh, and laid down her work for a moment.

"Why don't you stop it Mother dear? There's surely no hurry about these
things."

"No--not particularly," her mother answered, "but there's plenty else to
do." And she went on with the long neat hemming. Diantha did the "over
and over seam" up the middle.

"What _do_ you do it for anyway, Mother--I always hated this job--and
you don't seem to like it."

"They wear almost twice as long, child, you know. The middle gets worn
and the edges don't. Now they're reversed. As to liking it--" She
gave a little smile, a smile that was too tired to be sarcastic, but
which certainly did not indicate pleasure.

"What kind of work do you like best--really?" her daughter inquired
suddenly, after a silent moment or two.

"Why--I don't know," said her mother. "I never thought of it. I never
tried any but teaching. I didn't like that. Neither did your Aunt
Esther, but she's still teaching."

"Didn't you like any of it?" pursued Diantha.

"I liked arithmetic best. I always loved arithmetic, when I went to
school--used to stand highest in that."

"And what part of housework do you like best?" the girl persisted.

Mrs. Bell smiled again, wanly. "Seems to me sometimes as if I couldn't
tell sometimes what part I like least!" she answered. Then with sudden
heat--"O my Child! Don't you marry till Ross can afford at least one
girl for you!"

Diantha put her small, strong hands behind her head and leaned back in
her chair. "We'll have to wait some time for that I fancy," she said.
"But, Mother, there is one part you like--keeping accounts! I never saw
anything like the way you manage the money, and I believe you've got
every bill since yon were married."

"Yes--I do love accounts," Mrs. Bell admitted. "And I can keep run of
things. I've often thought your Father'd have done better if he'd let
me run that end of his business."

Diantha gave a fierce little laugh. She admired her father in some
ways, enjoyed him in some ways, loved him as a child does if not
ill-treated; but she loved her mother with a sort of passionate pity
mixed with pride; feeling always nobler power in her than had ever had a
fair chance to grow. It seemed to her an interminable dull tragedy;
this graceful, eager, black-eyed woman, spending what to the girl was
literally a lifetime, in the conscientious performance of duties she did
not love.

She knew her mother's idea of duty, knew the clear head, the steady
will, the active intelligence holding her relentlessly to the task; the
chafe and fret of seeing her husband constantly attempting against her
judgment, and failing for lack of the help he scorned. Young as she
was, she realized that the nervous breakdown of these later years was
wholly due to that common misery of "the square man in the round hole."

She folded her finished sheet in accurate lines and laid it away--taking
her mother's also. "Now you sit still for once, Mother dear, read or
lie down. Don't you stir till supper's ready."

And from pantry to table she stepped, swiftly and lightly, setting out
what was needed, greased her pans and set them before her, and proceeded
to make biscuit.

Her mother watched her admiringly. "How easy you do it!" she said. "I
never could make bread without getting flour all over me. You don't
spill a speck!"

Diantha smiled. "I ought to do it easily by this time. Father's got to
have hot bread for supper--or thinks he has!--and I've made 'em--every
night when I was at home for this ten years back!"

"I guess you have," said Mrs. Bell proudly. "You were only eleven when
you made your first batch. I can remember just as well! I had one of
my bad headaches that night--and it did seem as if I couldn't sit up!
But your Father's got to have his biscuit whether or no. And you said,
'Now Mother you lie right still on that sofa and let me do it! I can!'
And you could!--you did! They were bettern' mine that first time--and
your Father praised 'em--and you've been at it ever since."

"Yes," said Diantha, with a deeper note of feeling than her mother
caught, "I've been at it ever since!"

"Except when you were teaching school," pursued her mother.

"Except when I taught school at Medville," Diantha corrected. "When I
taught here I made 'em just the same."

"So you did," agreed her mother. "So you did! No matter how tired you
were--you wouldn't admit it. You always were the best child!"

"If I was tired it was not of making biscuits anyhow. I was tired
enough of teaching school though. I've got something to tell you,
presently, Mother."

She covered the biscuits with a light cloth and set them on the shelf
over the stove; then poked among the greasewood roots to find what she
wanted and started a fire. "Why _don't_ you get an oil stove? Or a
gasoline? It would be a lot easier."

"Yes," her mother agreed. "I've wanted one for twenty years; but you
know your Father won't have one in the house. He says they're
dangerous. What are you going to tell me, dear? I do hope you and Ross
haven't quarrelled."

"No indeed we haven't, Mother. Ross is splendid. Only--"

"Only what, Dinah?"

"Only he's so tied up!" said the girl, brushing every chip from the
hearth. "He's perfectly helpless there, with that mother of his--and
those four sisters."

"Ross is a good son," said Mrs. Bell, "and a good brother. I never saw
a better. He's certainly doing his duty. Now if his father'd lived you
two could have got married by this time maybe, though you're too young
yet."

Diantha washed and put away the dishes she had used, saw that the pantry
was in its usual delicate order, and proceeded to set the table, with
light steps and no clatter of dishes.

"I'm twenty-one," she said.

"Yes, you're twenty-one," her mother allowed. "It don't seem possible,
but you are. My first baby!" she looked at her proudly

"If Ross has to wait for all those girls to marry--and to pay his
father's debts--I'll be old enough," said Diantha grimly.

Her mother watched her quick assured movements with admiration, and
listened with keen sympathy. "I know it's hard, dear child. You've
only been engaged six months--and it looks as if it might be some years
before Ross'll be able to marry. He's got an awful load for a boy to
carry alone."

"I should say he had!" Diantha burst forth. "Five helpless women!--or
three women, and two girls. Though Cora's as old as I was when I began
to teach. And not one of 'em will lift a finger to earn her own
living."

"They weren't brought up that way," said Mrs. Bell. "Their mother don't
approve of it. She thinks the home is the place for a woman--and so
does Ross--and so do I," she added rather faintly.

Diantha put her pan of white puff-balls into the oven, sliced a quantity
of smoked beef in thin shavings, and made white sauce for it, talking
the while as if these acts were automatic. "I don't agree with Mrs.
Warden on that point, nor with Ross, nor with you, Mother," she said,
"What I've got to tell you is this--I'm going away from home. To work."

Mrs. Bell stopped rocking, stopped fanning, and regarded her daughter
with wide frightened eyes.

"Why Diantha!" she said. "Why Diantha! You wouldn't go and leave your
Mother!"

Diantha drew a deep breath and stood for a moment looking at the feeble
little woman in the chair. Then she went to her, knelt down and hugged
her close--close.

"It's not because I don't love you, Mother. It's because I do. And
it's not because I don't love Ross either:--it's because I _do._ I want
to take care of you, Mother, and make life easier for you as long as you
live. I want to help him--to help carry that awful load--and I'm
going--to--do--it!"

She stood up hastily, for a step sounded on the back porch. It was only
her sister, who hurried in, put a dish on the table, kissed her mother
and took another rocking-chair.

"I just ran in," said she, "to bring those berries. Aren't they
beauties? The baby's asleep. Gerald hasn't got in yet. Supper's all
ready, and I can see him coming time enough to run back. Why, Mother!
What's the matter? You're crying!"

"Am I?" asked Mrs. Bell weakly; wiping her eyes in a dazed way.

"What are you doing to Mother, Diantha?" demanded young Mrs. Peters.
"Bless me! I thought you and she never had any differences! I was always
the black sheep, when I was at home. Maybe that's why I left so early!"

She looked very pretty and complacent, this young matron and mother of
nineteen; and patted the older woman's hand affectionately, demanding,
"Come--what's the trouble?"

"You might as well know now as later," said her sister. "I have decided
to leave home, that's all."

"To leave home!" Mrs. Peters sat up straight and stared at her. "To
leave home!--And Mother!"

"Well?" said Diantha, while the tears rose and ran over from her
mother's eyes. "Well, why not? You left home--and Mother--before you
were eighteen."

"That's different!" said her sister sharply. "I left to be married,--to
have a home of my own. And besides I haven't gone far! I can see
Mother every day."

"That's one reason I can go now better than later on," Diantha said.
"You are close by in case of any trouble."

"What on earth are you going for? Ross isn't ready to marry yet, is
he?"

"No--nor likely to be for years. That's another reason I'm going."

"But what _for,_ for goodness sake."

"To earn money--for one thing."

"Can't you earn money enough by teaching?" the Mother broke in eagerly.
"I know you haven't got the same place this fall--but you can get
another easy enough."

Diantha shook her head. "No, Mother, I've had enough of that. I've
taught for four years. I don't like it, I don't do well, and it
exhausts me horribly. And I should never get beyond a thousand or
fifteen hundred dollars a year if I taught for a lifetime."

"Well, I declare!" said her sister. "What do you _expect_ to get? I
should think fifteen hundred dollars a year was enough for any woman!"

Diantha peered into the oven and turned her biscuit pan around.

"And you're meaning to leave home just to make money, are you?"

"Why not?" said Diantha firmly. "Henderson did--when he was eighteen.
None of you blamed him."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," her mother ventured.
"Henderson's a boy, and boys have to go, of course. A mother expects
that. But a girl--Why, Diantha! How can I get along without you! With
my health!"

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself to think of such a thing!"
said young Mrs. Peters.

A slow step sounded outside, and an elderly man, tall, slouching,
carelessly dressed, entered, stumbling a little over the rag-mat at the
door.

"Father hasn't got used to that rug in fourteen years!" said his
youngest daughter laughingly. "And Mother will straighten it out after
him! I'm bringing Gerald up on better principles. You should just see
him wait on me!"

"A man should be master in his own household," Mr. Bell proclaimed,
raising a dripping face from the basin and looking around for the
towel--which his wife handed him.

"You won't have much household to be master of presently," said Mrs.
Peters provokingly. "Half of it's going to leave."

Mr. Bell came out of his towel and looked from one to the other for some
explanation of this attempted joke, "What nonsense are you talking?" he
demanded.

"I think it's nonsense myself," said the pretty young woman--her hand on
the doorknob. "But you'd better enjoy those biscuits of Di's while you
can--you won't get many more! There's Gerald--good night!" And off she
ran.

Diantha set the plateful on the table, puffy, brown, and crisply
crusted. "Supper's ready," she said. "Do sit down, Mother," and she
held the chair for her. "Minnie's quite right, Father, though I meant
not to tell you till you'd had supper. I am going away to work."

Mr. Bell regarded his daughter with a stern, slow stare; not so much
surprised as annoyed by an untimely jesting. He ate a hot biscuit in
two un-Fletcherized mouthfuls, and put more sugar in his large cup of
tea. "You've got your Mother all worked up with your nonsense," said
he. "What are you talking about anyway?"

Diantha met his eyes unflinchingly. He was a tall old man, still
handsome and impressive in appearance, had been the head of his own
household beyond question, ever since he was left the only son of an
idolizing mother. But he had never succeeded in being the head of
anything else. Repeated failures in the old New England home had
resulted in his ruthlessly selling all the property there; and bringing
his delicate wife and three young children to California. Vain were her
protests and objections. It would do her good--best place in the world
for children--good for nervous complaints too. A wife's duty was to
follow her husband, of course. She had followed, willy nilly; and it
was good for the children--there was no doubt of that.

Mr. Bell had profited little by his venture. They had the ranch, the
flowers and fruit and ample living of that rich soil; but he had failed
in oranges, failed in raisins, failed in prunes, and was now failing in
wealth-promising hens.

But Mrs. Bell, though an ineffectual housekeeper, did not fail in the
children. They had grown up big and vigorous, sturdy, handsome
creatures, especially the two younger ones. Diantha was good-looking
enough. Roscoe Warden thought her divinely beautiful. But her young
strength had been heavily taxed from childhood in that complex process
known as "helping mother." As a little child she had been of constant
service in caring for the babies; and early developed such competence in
the various arts of house work as filled her mother with fond pride, and
even wrung from her father some grudging recognition. That he did not
value it more was because he expected such competence in women, all
women; it was their natural field of ability, their duty as wives and
mothers. Also as daughters. If they failed in it that was by illness
or perversity. If they succeeded--that was a matter of course.

He ate another of Diantha's excellent biscuits, his greyish-red whiskers
slowly wagging; and continued to eye her disapprovingly. She said
nothing, but tried to eat; and tried still harder to make her heart go
quietly, her cheeks keep cool, and her eyes dry. Mrs. Bell also strove
to keep a cheerful countenance; urged food upon her family; even tried
to open some topic of conversation; but her gentle words trailed off
into unnoticed silence.

Mr. Bell ate until he was satisfied and betook himself to a comfortable
chair by the lamp, where he unfolded the smart local paper and lit his
pipe. "When you've got through with the dishes, Diantha," he said
coldly, "I'll hear about this proposition of yours."

Diantha cleared the table, lowered the leaves, set it back against the
wall, spreading the turkey-red cloth upon it. She washed the
dishes,--her kettle long since boiling, scalded them, wiped them, set
them in their places; washed out the towels, wiped the pan and hung it
up, swiftly, accurately, and with a quietness that would have seemed
incredible to any mistress of heavy-footed servants. Then with
heightened color and firm-set mouth, she took her place by the lamplit
table and sat still.

Her mother was patiently darning large socks with many holes--a kind of
work she specially disliked. "You'll have to get some new socks,
Father," she ventured, "these are pretty well gone."

"O they'll do a good while yet," he replied, not looking at them. "I
like your embroidery, my dear."

That pleased her. She did not like to embroider, but she did like to be
praised.

Diantha took some socks and set to work, red-checked and excited, but
silent yet. Her mother's needle trembled irregularly under and over,
and a tear or two slid down her cheeks.

Finally Mr. Bell laid down his finished paper and his emptied pipe and
said, "Now then. Out with it."

This was not a felicitious opening. It is really astonishing how little
diplomacy parents exhibit, how difficult they make it for the young to
introduce a proposition. There was nothing for it but a bald statement,
so Diantha made it baldly.

"I have decided to leave home and go to work," she said.

"Don't you have work enough to do at home?" he inquired, with the same
air of quizzical superiority which had always annoyed her so intensely,
even as a little child.

She would cut short this form of discussion: "I am going away to earn my
living. I have given up school-teaching--I don't like it, and, there
isn't money enough in it. I have plans--which will speak for themselves
later."

"So," said Mr. Bell, "Plans all made, eh? I suppose you've considered
your Mother in these plans?"

"I have," said his daughter. "It is largely on her account that I'm
going."

"You think it'll be good for your Mother's health to lose your
assistance, do you?"

"I know she'll miss me; but I haven't left the work on her shoulders. I
am going to pay for a girl--to do the work I've done. It won't cost you
any more, Father; and you'll save some--for she'll do the washing too.
You didn't object to Henderson's going--at eighteen. You didn't object
to Minnie's going--at seventeen. Why should you object to my going--at
twenty-one."

"I haven't objected--so far," replied her father. "Have your plans also
allowed for the affection and duty you owe your parents?"

"I have done my duty--as well as I know how," she answered. "Now I am
twenty-one, and self-supporting--and have a right to go."

"O yes. You have a right--a legal right--if that's what you base your
idea of a child's duty on! And while you're talking of rights--how
about a parent's rights? How about common gratitude! How about what
you owe to me--for all the care and pains and cost it's been to bring
you up. A child's a rather expensive investment these days."

Diantha flushed. she had expected this, and yet it struck her like a
blow. It was not the first time she had heard it--this claim of filial
obligation.

"I have considered that position, Father. I know you feel that
way--you've often made me feel it. So I've been at some pains to work
it out--on a money basis. Here is an account--as full as I could make
it." She handed him a paper covered with neat figures. The totals read
as follows:

Miss Diantha Bell,
To Mr. Henderson R. Bell, Dr.

To medical and dental expenses . . . $110.00
To school expenses . . . $76.00
To clothing, in full . . . $1,130.00
To board and lodging at $3.00 a week . . . $2,184.00
To incidentals . . . $100.00
--------
$3.600.00

He studied the various items carefully, stroking his beard, half in
anger, half in unavoidable amusement. Perhaps there was a tender
feeling too, as he remembered that doctor's bill--the first he ever
paid, with the other, when she had scarlet fever; and saw the exact
price of the high chair which had served all three of the children, but
of which she magnanimously shouldered the whole expense.

The clothing total was so large that it made him whistle--he knew he had
never spent $1,130.00 on one girl's clothes. But the items explained
it.

Materials, three years at an average of $10 a year . . . $30.00
Five years averaging $20 each year . . . $100.00
Five years averaging $30 each year . . . $50.00
Five years averaging $50 each year . . . $250.00
-------
$530.00

The rest was "Mother's labor, averaging twenty full days a year at $2 a
day, $40 a year. For fifteen years, $600.00. Mother's labor--on one
child's, clothes--footing up to $600.00. It looked strange to see cash
value attached to that unfailing source of family comfort and advantage.

The school expenses puzzled him a bit, for she had only gone to public
schools; but she was counting books and slates and even pencils--it
brought up evenings long passed by, the sewing wife, the studying
children, the "Say, Father, I've got to have a new slate--mine's broke!"

"Broken, Dina," her Mother would gently correct, while he demanded, "How
did you break it?" and scolded her for her careless tomboy ways.
Slates--three, $1.50--they were all down. And slates didn't cost so
much come to think of it, even the red-edged ones, wound with black,
that she always wanted.

Board and lodging was put low, at $3.00 per week, but the items had a
footnote as to house-rent in the country, and food raised on the farm.
Yes, he guessed that was a full rate for the plain food and bare little
bedroom they always had.

"It's what Aunt Esther paid the winter she was here," said Diantha.

Circuses--three . . . $1.50
Share in melodeon . . . $50.00

Yes, she was one of five to use and enjoy it.

Music lessons . . . $30.00

And quite a large margin left here, called miscellaneous, which he
smiled to observe made just an even figure, and suspected she had put in
for that purpose as well as from generosity.

"This board account looks kind of funny," he said--"only fourteen years
of it!"

"I didn't take table-board--nor a room--the first year--nor much the
second. I've allowed $1.00 a week for that, and $2.00 for the
third--that takes out two, you see. Then it's $156 a year till I was
fourteen and earned board and wages, two more years at $156--and I've
paid since I was seventeen, you know."

"Well--I guess you did--I guess you did." He grinned genially. "Yes,"
he continued slowly, "I guess that's a fair enough account. 'Cording to
this, you owe me $3,600.00, young woman! I didn't think it cost that
much to raise a girl."

"I know it," said she. "But here's the other side."

It was the other side. He had never once thought of such a side to the
case. This account was as clear and honest as the first and full of
exasperating detail. She laid before him the second sheet of figures
and watched while he read, explaining hurriedly:

"It was a clear expense for ten years--not counting help with the
babies. Then I began to do housework regularly--when I was ten or
eleven, two hours a day; three when I was twelve and thirteen--real work
you'd have had to pay for, and I've only put it at ten cents an hour.
When Mother was sick the year I was fourteen, and I did it all but the
washing--all a servant would have done for $3.00 a week. Ever since
then I have done three hours a day outside of school, full grown work
now, at twenty cents an hour. That's what we have to pay here, you
know."

Thus it mounted up:

Mr. Henderson R. Bell,
To Miss Diantha Bell, Dr.

For labor and services--

Two years, two hours a day at 10c. an hour . . . $146.00
Two years, three hours a day at 10c. an hour . . . $219.00
One year, full wages at $5.00 a week . . . $260.00
Six years and a half, three hours a day at 20c . . . $1423.50
--------
$2048.50

Mr. Bell meditated carefully on these figures. To think of that child's
labor footing up to two thousand dollars and over! It was lucky a man
had a wife and daughters to do this work, or he could never support a
family.

Then came her school-teaching years. She had always been a fine scholar
and he had felt very proud of his girl when she got a good school
position in her eighteenth year.

California salaries were higher than eastern ones, and times had changed
too; the year he taught school he remembered the salary was only
$300.00--and he was a man. This girl got $600, next year $700, $800,
$900; why it made $3,000 she had earned in four years. Astonishing.
Out of this she had a balance in the bank of $550.00. He was pleased to
see that she had been so saving. And her clothing account--little
enough he admitted for four years and six months, $300.00. All
incidentals for the whole time, $50.00--this with her balance made just
$900. That left $2,100.00.

"Twenty-one hundred dollars unaccounted for, young lady!--besides this
nest egg in the bank--I'd no idea you were so wealthy. What have you
done with all that?"

"Given it to you, Father," said she quietly, and handed him the third
sheet of figures.

Board and lodging at $4.00 a week for 4 1/2 years made $936.00, that he
could realize; but "cash advance" $1,164 more--he could not believe it.
That time her mother was so sick and Diantha had paid both the doctor
and the nurse--yes--he had been much cramped that year--and nurses come
high. For Henderson, Jr.'s, expenses to San Francisco, and again for
Henderson when he was out of a job--Mr. Bell remembered the boy's
writing for the money, and his not having it, and Mrs. Bell saying she
could arrange with Diantha.

Arrange! And that girl had kept this niggardly account of it! For
Minnie's trip to the Yosemite--and what was this?--for his raisin
experiment--for the new horse they simply had to have for the drying
apparatus that year he lost so much money in apricots--and for the
spraying materials--yes, he could not deny the items, and they covered
that $1,164.00 exactly.

Then came the deadly balance, of the account between them:

Her labor . . . $2,047.00
Her board . . . $936.00
Her "cash advanced" . . . $1,164.00
---------
$4,147.00
His expense for her . . . $3,600
---------
Due her from him . . . $547.00

Diantha revolved her pencil between firm palms, and looked at him rather
quizzically; while her mother rocked and darned and wiped away an
occasional tear. She almost wished she had not kept accounts so well.

Mr. Bell pushed the papers away and started to his feet.

"This is the most shameful piece of calculation I ever saw in my life,"
said he. "I never heard of such a thing! You go and count up in cold
dollars the work that every decent girl does for her family and is glad
to! I wonder you haven't charged your mother for nursing her?"

"You notice I haven't," said Diantha coldly.

"And to think," said he, gripping the back of a chair and looking down
at her fiercely, "to think that a girl who can earn nine hundred dollars
a year teaching school, and stay at home and do her duty by her family
besides, should plan to desert her mother outright--now she's old and
sick! Of course I can't stop you! You're of age, and children nowadays
have no sense of natural obligation after they're grown up. You can go,
of course, and disgrace the family as you propose--but you needn't
expect to have me consent to it or approve of it--or of you. It's a
shameful thing--and you are an unnatural daughter--that's all I've got
to say!"

Mr. Bell took his hat and went out--a conclusive form of punctuation
much used by men in discussions of this sort.

THE POOR RELATION

A certain man had a Poor Relation, who was only kept in the family as a
Servant, who was certainly open to criticism, and who got it.

"He is so dirty!" said the Head of the Family, "That is why we make him
sleep over the stable."

"He is careless and clumsy--he soils, breaks and loses things--that is
why his furniture and clothing are so poor."

"He is a stupid fellow--not to be trusted with any important
business--that is why he does the scullery work!"

"He is a sickly wretch too--it costs us a deal of money to have him
cared for in the hospital and his defects attended to."

"Worst of all he has criminal tendencies--he is a disgrace and an
expense to the Family on this account alone."

"Why do you keep him at all?" I asked.

"We have to--he is after all a relation. Besides--someone must do the
scullery work."

"What do you pay him?" I asked.

"We don't really pay him anything; we just keep him alive--and
clothed--so that he can do his work."

"Was he born defective?" I asked.

"No--I've heard my mother say he was as good a baby as I."

"And what relation did you say he was?"

"I rather hate to own it--but he's my brother!"

HIS CRUTCHES

Why should the Stronger Sex require,
To hold him to his tasks,
Two medicines of varied fire?
The Weaker Vessel asks.

Hobbling between the rosy cup
And dry narcotic brown,--
One daily drug to stir him up
And one to soothe him down.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

II.

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY.

The family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be called a
human institution. A post office, now, is wholly human; no other
creature has a post office, but there are families in plenty among birds
and beasts; all kinds permanent and transient; monogamous, polygamous
and polyandrous.

We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what is its
rational development in humanness; in mechanical, mental and social
lines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it of
this strange new arrangement--a masculine proprietor.

Like all natural institutions the family has a purpose; and is to be
measured primarily as it serves that purpose; which is, the care and
nurture of the young. To protect the helpless little ones, to feed and
shelter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period of
immaturity, and so to improve the race--this is the original purpose of
the family.

When a natural institution becomes human it enters the plane of
consciousness. We think about it; and, in our strange new power of
voluntary action do things to it. We have done strange things to the
family; or, more specifically, men have.

Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Women's virtue is man's best
invention." Balsac was wrong. Virtue--the unswerving devotion to one
mate--is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. If Balsac
meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's
inventions--though hardly his best.

What man has done to the family, speaking broadly, is to change it from
an institution for the best service of the child to one modified to his
own service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride.

Among the heavy millions of the stirred East, a child--necessarily a
male child--is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and his
fathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the best service
of the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law,
is of wholly androcentric origin. It is strongest among old patriarchal
races; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in America
today in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of our ancestors.

The best thing any of us can do for our ancestors is to be better than
they were; and we ought to give our minds to it. When we use our past
merely as a guide-book, and concentrate our noble emotions on the
present and future, we shall improve more rapidly.

The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of
the male are easily traced. In these studies we must keep clearly in
mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat,
self-expression--all legitimate and right in proper use; only
mischievous when excessive or out of place. Through them the male is
led to strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the
overflowing ardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful
splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an
embroidered waistcoat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the
stag's locked horns to the clashing spears of the tournament.

It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at the
necessarily frequent, reference to these essential features of maleness.
In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness that
has been studied and enlarged upon. And though women, after thousands
of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the
constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not
object to an analogous study--at least not for some time--a few
centuries or so.

How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and
self-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?

First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection. One of the
most uplifting forces of nature is that of sex selection. The males,
numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications,
compete for the female, and she selects the victor, this securing to the
race the new improvements.

In forming the proprietary family there is no such competition, no such
selection. The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing--he
selects the kind of woman that pleases him. Nature did not intend him
to select; he is not good at it. Neither was the female intended to
compete--she is not good at it.

If there is a race between males for a mate--the swiftest gets her
first; but if one male is chasing a number of females he gets the
slowest first. The one method improves our speed: the other does not.
If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongest
secures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female--(a
peculiar and unnatural horror, known only among human beings) he most
readily secures the weakest. The one method improves our strength--the
other does not.

When women became the property of men; sold and bartered; "given away"
by their paternal owner to their marital owner; they lost this
prerogative of the female, this primal duty of selection. The males
were no longer improved by their natural competition for the female; and
the females were not improved; because the male did not select for
points of racial superiority, but for such qualities as pleased him.

There is a locality in northern Africa, where young girls are
deliberately fed with a certain oily seed, to make them fat,--that they
may be the more readily married,--as the men like fat wives. Among
certain more savage African tribes the chief's wives are prepared for
him by being kept in small dark huts and fed on "mealies' and molasses;
precisely as a Strasbourg goose is fattened for the gourmand. Now
fatness is not a desirable race characteristic; it does not add to the
woman's happiness or efficiency; or to the child's; it is merely an
accessory pleasant to the master; his attitude being much as the amorous
monad ecstatically puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five Lives,"

"O the little female monad's lips!
O the little female monad's eyes!
O the little, little, female, female monad!"

This ultra littleness and ultra femaleness has been demanded and
produced by our Androcentric Culture.

Following this, and part of it, comes the effect on motherhood. This
function was the original and legitimate base of family life; and its
ample sustaining power throughout the long early period of "the
mother-right;" or as we call it, the matriarchate; the father being her
assistant in the great work. The patriarchate, with its proprietary
family, changed this altogether; the woman, as the property of the man
was considered first and foremost as a means of pleasure to him; and
while she was still valued as a mother, it was in a tributary capacity.
Her children were now his; his property, as she was; the whole enginery
of the family was turned from its true use to this new one, hitherto
unknown, the service of the adult male.

To this day we are living under the influence of the proprietary family.
The duty of the wife is held to involve man-service as well as
child-service, and indeed far more; as the duty of the wife to the
husband quite transcends the duty of the mother to the child.

See for instance the English wife staying with her husband in India and
sending the children home to be brought up; because India is bad for
children. See our common law that the man decides the place of
residence; if the wife refuses to go with him to howsoever unfit a place
for her and for the little ones, such refusal on her part constitutes
"desertion" and is ground for divorce.

See again the idea that the wife must remain with the husband though a
drunkard, or diseased; regardless of the sin against the child involved
in such a relation. Public feeling on these matters is indeed changing;
but as a whole the ideals of the man-made family still obtain.

The effect of this on the woman has been inevitably to weaken and
overshadow her sense of the real purpose of the family; of the
relentless responsibilities of her duty as a mother. She is first
taught duty to her parents, with heavy religious sanction; and then duty
to her husband, similarly buttressed; but her duty to her children has
been left to instinct. She is not taught in girlhood as to her
preeminent power and duty as a mother; her young ideals are all of
devotion to the lover and husband: with only the vaguest sense of
results.

The young girl is reared in what we call "innocence;" poetically
described as "bloom;" and this condition is held one of her chief
"charms." The requisite is wholly androcentric. This "innocence" does
not enable her to choose a husband wisely; she does not even know the
dangers that possibly confront her. We vaguely imagine that her father
or brother, who do know, will protect her. Unfortunately the father and
brother, under our current "double standard" of morality do not judge
the applicants as she would if she knew the nature of their offenses.

Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of them, no amount of general
advice and opposition serves to prevent her marrying him. "I love him!"
she says, sublimely. "I do not care what he has done. I will forgive
him. I will save him!"

This state of mind serves to forward the interests of the lover, but is
of no advantage to the children. We have magnified the duties of the
wife, and minified the duties of the mother; and this is inevitable in a
family relation every law and custom of which is arranged from the
masculine viewpoint.

From this same viewpoint, equally essential to the proprietary family,
comes the requirement that the woman shall serve the man. Her service
is not that of the associate and equal, as when she joins him in his
business. It is not that of a beneficial combination, as when she
practices another business and they share the profits; it is not even
that of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or barber; it is
personal service--the work of a servant.

In large generalization, the women of the world cook and wash, sweep and
dust, sew and mend, for the men.

We are so accustomed to this relation; have held it for so long to be
the "natural" relation, that it is difficult indeed to show that it is
distinctly unnatural and injurious. The father expects to be served by
the daughter, a service quite different from what he expects of the son.
This shows at once that such service is no integral part of motherhood,
or even of marriage; but is supposed to be the proper industrial
position of women, as such.

Why is this so? Why, on the face of it, given a daughter and a son,
should a form of service be expected of the one, which would be
considered ignominious by the other?

The underlying reason is this. Industry, at its base, is a feminine
function. The surplus energy of the mother does not manifest itself in
noise, or combat, or display, but in productive industry. Because of
her mother-power she became the first inventor and laborer; being in
truth the mother of all industry as well as all people.

Man's entrance upon industry is late and reluctant; as will be shown
later in treating his effect on economics. In this field of family
life, his effect was as follows:

Establishing the proprietary family at an age when the industry was
primitive and domestic; and thereafter confining the woman solely to the
domestic area, he thereby confined her to primitive industry. The
domestic industries, in the hands of women, constitute a survival of our
remotest past. Such work was "woman's work" as was all the work then
known; such work is still considered woman's work because they have been
prevented from doing any other.

The term "domestic industry" does not define a certain kind of labor,
but a certain grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic industry
once--when every savage mother set up her own tepee. To be confined to
domestic industry is no proper distinction of womanhood; it is an
historic distinction, an economic distinction, it sets a date and limit
to woman's industrial progress.

In this respect the man-made family has resulted in arresting the
development of half the field. We have a world wherein men,
industrially, live in the twentieth century; and women, industrially,
live in the first--and back of it.

To the same source we trace the social and educational limitations set
about women. The dominant male, holding his women as property, and
fiercely jealous of them, considering them always as _his,_ not
belonging to themselves, their children, or the world; has hedged them
in with restrictions of a thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippled
Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque; moral, as in the oppressive
doctrines of submission taught by all our androcentric religions;
mental, as in the enforced ignorance from which women are now so swiftly
emerging.

This abnormal restriction of women has necessarily injured motherhood.
The man, free, growing in the world's growth, has mounted with the
centuries, filling an ever wider range of world activities. The woman,
bound, has not so grown; and the child is born to a progressive
fatherhood and a stationary motherhood. Thus the man-made family reacts
unfavorably upon the child. We rob our children of half their social
heredity by keeping the mother in an inferior position; however
legalized, hallowed, or ossified by time, the position of a domestic
servant is inferior.

It is for this reason that child culture is at so low a level, and for
the most part utterly unknown. Today, when the forces of education are
steadily working nearer to the cradle, a new sense is wakening of the
importance of the period of infancy, and its wiser treatment; yet those
who know of such a movement are few, and of them some are content to
earn easy praise--and pay--by belittling right progress to gratify the
prejudices of the ignorant.

The whole position is simple and clear; and easily traceable to its
root. Given a proprietary family, where the man holds the woman
primarily for his satisfaction and service--then necessarily he shuts
her up and keeps her for these purposes. Being so kept, she cannot
develop humanly, as he has, through social contact, social service, true
social life. (We may note in passing, her passionate fondness for the
child-game called "society" she has been allowed to entertain herself
withal; that poor simiacrum of real social life, in which people
decorate themselves and madly crowd together, chattering, for what is
called "entertainment.") Thus checked in social development, we have
but a low grade motherhood to offer our children; and the children,
reared in the primitive conditions thus artificially maintained, enter
life with a false perspective, not only toward men and women, but toward
life as a whole.

The child should receive in the family, full preparation for his
relation to the world at large. His whole life must be spent in the
world, serving it well or ill; and youth is the time to learn how. But
the androcentric home cannot teach him. We live to-day in a
democracy-the man-made family is a despotism. It may be a weak one; the
despot may be dethroned and overmastered by his little harem of one; but
in that case she becomes the despot--that is all. The male is esteemed
"the head of the family;" it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the
rest of the world is a wide hunting ground and battlefield wherein he
competes with other males as of old.

The girl-child, peering out, sees this forbidden field as belonging
wholly to men-kind; and her relation to it is to secure one for
herself--not only that she may love, but that she may live. He will
feed, clothe and adorn her--she will serve him; from the subjection of
the daughter to that of the wife she steps; from one home to the other,
and never enters the world at all--man's world.

The boy, on the other hand, considers the home as a place of women, an
inferior place, and longs to grow up and leave it--for the real world.
He is quite right. The error is that this great social instinct,
calling for full social exercise, exchange, service, is considered
masculine, whereas it is human, and belongs to boy and girl alike.

The child is affected first through the retarded development of his
mother, then through the arrested condition of home industry; and
further through the wrong ideals which have arisen from these
conditions. A normal home, where there was human equality between
mother and father, would have a better influence.

We must not overlook the effect of the proprietary family on the
proprietor himself. He, too, has been held back somewhat by this
reactionary force. In the process of becoming human we must learn to
recognize justice, freedom, human rights; we must learn self-control and
to think of others; have minds that grow and broaden rationally; we must
learn the broad mutual interservice and unbounded joy of social
intercourse and service. The petty despot of the man-made home is
hindered in his humanness by too much manness.

For each man to have one whole woman to cook for and wait upon him is a
poor education for democracy. The boy with a servile mother, the man
with a servile wife, cannot reach the sense of equal rights we need
to-day. Too constant consideration of the master's tastes makes the
master selfish; and the assault upon his heart direct, or through that
proverbial side-avenue, the stomach, which the dependent woman needs
must make when she wants anything, is bad for the man, as well as for
her.

We are slowly forming a nobler type of family; the union of two, based
on love and recognized by law, maintained because of its happiness and
use. We are even now approaching a tenderness and permanence of love,
high pure enduring love; combined with the broad deep-rooted
friendliness and comradeship of equals; which promises us more happiness
in marriage than we have yet known. It will be good for all the parties
concerned--man, woman and child: and promote our general social progress
admirably.

If it needs "a head" it will elect a chairman pro tem. Friendship does
not need "a head." Love does dot need "a head." Why should a family?

COMMENT AND REVIEW

I watched and waited for Margharita's Soul through eleven glittering
chapters of fair words; and when it appeared at last, in the twelfth
chapter, it was the funniest little by-product, born of imminent peril
and ice-water.

A beautiful great body had Margharita and a beautiful great voice; but
her long-delayed soul was the size of a small island and one family.
Funny notion of a soul! A hen might have it. No, not a hen--she is a
light-minded promiscuous creature; but a stork, let us say; she is
monogamous and quite bound up in her family. No--not a stork
either--storks migrate; no island would satisfy her. Apparently it
takes a human creature to be proud of a soul that size.

It is a very pretty story.

Thesis: the only thing a woman is for is matrimony and much
childbearing! If she don't like it--no soul.

To develop thesis: Some unusual conditions; and a weird feminine
product, of such sort that her lover's sudden surrender and frantic
marriage is as it were involuntary. It is of the kind that requires no
soul in the beloved object, a soul might have been a little in the way
in that violent attack.

Then--to sharply accent and enforce the thesis, our soulless
charmer--(her overwhelming allure for the men about her, during this
period, casts a sharp sidelight on the value of Soul as an Attraction!)
is given a Golden Voice.

This Voice is evidently one to give measureless pleasure to thousands;
not only so, but is shown to have such power as to touch hard hearts and
lead them heavenward; she with no soul assisting the souls of others;
long careful chapters are given to this voice; evidently as one decks
out a sacrifice; for the world comforting voice is only given her that
she may give it up--for Roger!

It seems a pity--with all this arranged, to ruin that voice by the shock
and exposure which aroused her Soul, She herself regretted it--having so
much less to give up--for Roger. She meant to give it up anyway, she
said. Perhaps the author didn't trust that new Soul completely--knowing
her previous character. Anyway there she is, plus a soul and minus a
voice; living on the island and populating it as rapidly as possible,
perfectly happy, and a lesson for us all.

But is there not also Madam Schumann-Heinck? A great sweet voice and a
great sweet mother too? Has she not a Soul?

*

This Duty of Childbearing is evidently weighing on the minds of men, in
these days. The thing must be done--they cant do it themselves, and
they are mightily afraid we won't, if we have half a chance to do
anything else. If a woman was by way of being a Dante or a Darwin, she
had better give it up--for Roger--and take to replenishing the earth.
She can't do both--that is the main assumption; and if she chooses to
serve the world outside of the home that is sheer loss.

Says this wise Searcher of Feminine Souls: "For if all the wisdom and
experience and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by its exodus
from the home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my
masculine stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race
at all! And then what good has it done?"

The gentleman does not see any way of advancing the human race except by
physical heredity--or by domestic influence.

What Shakespeare wrought into the constitution and character of his
daughter Judy is all that matters of his life and work. Keats, having
no children, contributed nothing to the world. George Washington,
childless, was of no social service. Lincoln is to be measured by the
number and quality of his offspring. Florence Nightingale, in lifting
the grade of nursing for the world, accomplished nothing. Uncle Tom's
Cabin was of no service except as it might in some mysterious way "get
back into the home." What mortal perversity is it that cannot see
Humanity in women as well as Sex; see that Social Service is something
in itself, quite over and above all the domestic and personal relations.

This getting back into the race means only the boys. It would do no
good for generations of Margaritas to inherit that Golden Voice--each
and all must give it up--for Roger. The race gets no music till the
bass, barytone or tenor appear.

Books like this are pathetic in their little efforts to check social
progress.

We suspect the author's name to be Mr. Partington.

*

(The Life and Times of Anne Royall. By Sarah Harvey Porter, M.A. 12mo.
Cloth, 209 pp. $1.50 net; postage 12 cents.)

Biography has never been a favorite study with me; but I was interested
in this book because the woman whose life it described seemed worth
while. Reading it, I found not only the life of Anne Royall, but the
life of America in the early part of the nineteenth century, in our
young, crude, dangerous days of national formation. A novel has been
defined as "a corner of life seen through a temperament." If that is a
true definition, then this is a novel, for Anne Royall had "temperament"
if ever anyone had, and she saw a large corner of life through it.

Who was Anne Royall? An American woman, pioneer born and bred, familiar
with the life-and-death struggle of the frontier, and full of the spirit
of '76. She was born in 1769, and lived through the War of the
Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and almost up to the Civil
War, dying in 1854. In 1797 she was married to Captain William Royall,
an exceptional man, a Virginian, cultivated, liberal, singularly
broad-minded and public-spirited, and life with him added years of
genuine culture to the energy of a naturally bright mind. Left a widow
at the age of forty-four, and, after ten years of travel and experience,
defrauded of the property left to her by her husband, she began to live
a brave self-supporting independent life at an age when most of the
women of her years were white-capped grandmothers.

Instead of sinking into the position of a dependent female relative, she
insisted on earning her own living. This she did as so many women do
to-day, by the use of her pen, a rarer profession in those times. The
more remarkable thing is that in the face of overwhelming odds she stood
for a religion, at a period when old-fashioned Calvinism was still a
dominant power. The most remarkable, is her absolute devotion to the
public interests, to social service as she saw it.

There were a good many women writers even at that time, some of high
merit, but there were few publicists among them. Some espoused this or
that "Cause" and gave to it the passionate devotion so natural to a
woman's heart. But Anne Royall, while she also was passionately devoted
to several well-defined "Causes," was unique in that she kept in view
the general situation of her country, political, economic, geographic,
and educational, and wrote steadily for thirty-one years on matters of
national importance.

It is not a question of whether she was right or wrong--though she was
mostly right, as history has proved; but the impressive thing is that
this old woman, with "troubles of her own," was overwhelmingly
interested in her country and its service. There are not so many,
either men or women, of this mind, that we can afford to overlook this
sturdy pioneer "new woman." She had virtues, too, good solid Christian
virtues of the rarer sort; she visited the sick and afflicted, gave to
him that asked, and from him that would borrow turned not away. Even to
her own weaker sisters she was a strength and comfort, greatly injuring
her own position by this unusual charity. Also she was brave, honest,
truthful, persevering, industrious--"manly" virtues these.

But--and here we have the reason why Anne Royall made no greater mark,
why she was "unsuccessful," why most of us never heard of her--she
attacked great powers, and she fought unwisely. Her abusive writing
sounds abominably to-day, but must be judged, of course, by the standard
of her time. The worst things she said were not as bad as things
Shelley said--as the bitter invective and scurrilous attacks common to
pamphleteers of the time. If our newspapers are yellow, theirs were
orange in the matter of personalities.

But even then this woman had a keen-cutting weapon, and used it
unsparingly. Being alone, with no male relative to defend her; being
poor, and so further defenceless; being old, thus lacking weak woman's
usual protection of beauty, she had absolutely nothing to fall back on
when her enemies retaliated.

This picture of one lone woman defying and blackguarding what was almost
an established church, is much like Jack the Giantkiller--with a
different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung
so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of
America, a court of men tried--and convicted--this solitary woman of
sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and
strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some
justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and
succeeded in irretrievably damaging her reputation.

She was not to be extinguished, however. In 1831 she started a
newspaper, with the ill-chosen name of PAUL PRY. In 1836 another took
its place, called THE HUNTRESS. And on the sale of these newspapers and
her books, the indomitable old lady lived to fight and fought to live
till she was eighty-five.

She is well worth reading about. The history of her times rises and
lives around her. In her vivid description we see the new rugged
country, over which she travelled from end to end; in her accounts of
current literature we pick up stray bits of information as to new
authors and new words. "Playfulness," for instance, is one which she
stigmatizes as "silly in sound and significance," and declares that she
does not read the new novels "with the exception of Walter Scott's."
More interesting still to most of us is to study over the long lists of
her pen-portraits and see our ancestors as the others saw them. Few
Americans of three generations but can find some grandfather or great
uncle halo-ed or pilloried by this clear-eyed observer.

Miss Porter has done her work well. It is clear, strong and
entertaining--this biography. If the writer seems more enthusiastic
about Anne Royall than the reader becomes, that is clearly due to an
unusual perception of life-values; a recognition of the noble devotion
and high courage of her subject, and an intense sympathy with such
characteristics.

*

The discussion as to whether we should or should not teach children the
Santa Claus myth pops up anew with Christmas time; and puzzles anew
anyone who regards this festival from a religious viewpoint.

If it was a choice between Santa Claus and nothing, we might prefer
Santa Claus; but here we have before us three things: first, the basis
of fact, the world old festival of the turn of the year, the coming of
the sun; second, a history of rejoicing peoples throughout all the ages,
keeping up the celebration under changing gods and dogmas; and third,
the story of beauty and wonder about the birth of Jesus.

Any child could be taught the meaning of the Coming of the Sun. The
growing light, the longer days, the beautiful future of flowers and
birds and playing in the grass; the joy of the young year. If we want
legends and stories, every religion behind us is full of them; stories
of sun-gods and their splendid triumph; stories of the great earth
mother and her bounty; stories of elves and gnomes and druids and all
manner of fairy tales.

But why avoid our own religion--the first which has emphatically taught
Love as the Law of Life--peace on earth and good-will to men. Are we
ashamed of our religion or don't we believe it any more? If we do
accept it in all the long-told tales of miracle and wonder, then we have
stories enough to tell our children; stories of simple human beauty,
stories of heavenly glory, stories of mystery and magic and delight.

If we do not wish to tell them these things as literally true; or even
as beautiful legends, there remains enough historic foundation to begin
with; and enough of the enduring glory of human love to last us a
lifetime.

"What is Christmas, Mama?"

"Christmas is a festival as old as the world, dear child--as old as our
human world; historic people have feasted and danced and sung for
thousands upon thousands of years, at this time of the year; and offered
gifts."

"Why do they give things at Christmas, Mama?"

"Because they are happy, dear; because they feel rich and glad and
loving now that the sun is coming back. As if Mama had been away--and
you could just see her--a long, long way off. You had seen her go--and
go--and go--farther and farther; and then she stopped a while--with her
back to you--and then all of a sudden she turned round and came toward
you! Wouldn't you be glad?"

Then if the child wants to know about the tree and the candles and all
the details of ceremony, there are facts and fancies to account for them
all.

But if he says, "Why do they call it Christmas, Mama?"--then you must
tell him the secret of Christianity--which is love.

Now, can anyone explain--or defend, in face of all this, our preference
for a shallow local myth about St. Nicholas, and the corruption of that
into a mere comic supplement character; a bulbous benevolent goblin,
red-nosed and gross, doing impossible tricks with reindeers and
chimneys, and half the time degraded to a mere adjunct of nursery
government? Why do we think it beautiful? Or interesting? Or
beneficial? The children like it, we say.

Children like what they are used to, generally. Also, like older
people, they are prone to like what isn't good for them. They like
brandy-drops among sweetmeats, but that is no reason we should supply
them.

*

This brings us to a strange characteristic of most of us; we seem to
prefer small cheap shallow outside things to the deep glowing beauty of
life. We seem afraid to take life at its splendid best; choosing rather
to live in a litter of petty ideas and feelings, and save the big ones
for Sundays--or annual holidays.

*

Yet in our hearts we all love great sweeps of emotion; and children
especially. Prof. Thomas, of Chicago, has given us a sidelight on this
in his clever book about women, "Sex and Society." He shows how in our
long pre-social period we were accustomed to strong excitement, long
hours of quivering suspense, mad rushes of blind fear, and orgies of
wild triumph. Our nerve channels were like the beds of mountain
streams, in dry warm lands; lying shallow or even empty at times; and
again roaring torrents. So that nowadays, on the paved levels of our
civilized life, the well-graduated dribble of small steady feelings, the
organism itself cries out for a change in the pressure.

Children and young people feel this more than older ones; the very old,
indeed, resent an unusual emotion. Yet when the young grow restless and
fretfully "wish something would happen!" we rebuke them; from the
heights of our enforced contentment; and call this natural and healthy
feeling a mere "thirst for excitement."

*

We need excitement. We have a vast capacity for it. It is a most
useful thing--this excitement; and we ought to have more of it, much
more. These young people are perfectly right in their uneasy feeling
that it would be nice to have something happen!

With all this to bank on, why so overlook the splendid possibilities of
Christmas? Why continue to make our helpless children's minds the
submissive channels for poor worn-out thin old stories? Are there no
gorgeous glowing truths in life--real life--now?

Then we tired aged people--born and reared in this atmosphere of cold
weariness; shake our heads and say--

"No. Life is hard. Life is dreary. Life is one long grind!"

That is where we are wrong, and the children are right. They come in
new every time. The earth is as young to them as it was to Adam.

If we would but once face the dignity and beauty of childhood instead of
looking down on it as we do--then we could take advantage of that
constant influx of force, instead of doing our best to crush it down.

This brings us sharply back to our Christmas--the festival of the Child.

It is. If celebrates the real new year; the new-born year, the opening
of another season of Life.

Dimly, very dimly, we have glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune
godhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern worship of the
Madonna and Child.

The time is coming very near when we shall see the meaning of The Child
more fully; and make our worship wiser.

What we see in all our thousand homes is "my child." What the
doll-taught mother sees is a sweet pretty dressable object; far more
time and effort being given--even before its birth--to the making of
clothing, than to the making of its constitution or character.

Then we see children as "a care," and a care they are to our worldwide
incompetence. How pathetic is the inadequacy of the young mother! She
would never dare to undertake to run a racing stable with no more
knowledge and experience than she brings to run a family.

She loves them--?

Yes, she loves them. And Mother love is so mighty a power that we all
love and honor Motherhood--in spite of its obvious deficiencies. But
none of these feelings; not even the deepest mother-love, is all that we
should give the child.

He needs Understanding--and Honor.

He needs to be recognized as the forefront of the world--the world of
to-morrow--the world we are making.

As we bear and rear him--and her!--as we guide and teach them both, so
stand the Men and Women who follow us.

*

Of course we do the best we can for our own little ones. That goes
without saying.

So does a monkey.

It is far more than that the child needs.

This Young Life, celebrated in our Christian Festival; this New Life,
Better Life, Life to Come, deserves more respect.

And the first meed of honor which we owe to our Successor, is to tell
him the truth!

*

That ought to put an end to our paltry old story of the Benign Chimney
Climber.

What we are here for, all of us, is to make the world better and the
people better. It is an easy and a pleasant game, if we would but give
our minds to it. The whole swiftly spreading enchantment of our varied
arts and industries is making a garden out of a wilderness; and even the
limited and defective education we now offer to our children, makes
better people than we used to have.

But what we have done for them is nothing to what we may do! The best
brains in the world should proudly serve the child. We should consider
him as a nation does its crown Prince--not a mere pet and darling--but a
coming Ruler.

*

Christmas will have a rejuvenation when it is recognized in this sense
as the Child's Festival. Every beautiful myth of the past remains to
decorate it; every beautiful truth to vivify it. It should be a
domestic, religious, civic, national and international festival.

It should mean Joy--and Hope--and Love; and teach them.

*

And Gifts?

Yes, gifts. There could be no more appropriate testimony to Joy and
Hope and Love than these visible fruits. Gifts to the happy child to
make him happier. Gifts _from_ the happy child--and the new joy of
giving. Gifts everywhere--from each to each--as showing the rich
overflow of Love and joy.

And more than that--Gifts from Each to All! There is a custom worth
initiating! Not charity nor anything of that sort. Not the mere
visiting of the sick and the prisoner. But a yearly practice of giving
something to the Community--to show you love it!

*

And suppose you don't?

If you had been properly taught as a child you would. If you teach our
children properly they will. Should we not gratefully recognize the
care and service that gives as everything we have? It is the most
glaring lesson in life--this universal help of each to all.

Every day of our lives we are served and guarded and generally blessed
by--the Community.

*

It is perfectly easy to teach this to a child. Everything that he sees
about him--that is not "a natural object," some of us dead or alive have
made. The accumulated services of all the people gone have given us the
world as it is; those now here keep it up for us; and we--and our
children may build it better.

Not love the people who have given you the world? How ungrateful!

*

At which you will remark disgustedly, "Given! Not much? They were paid
for it."

That is our mistake.

In the first place they never were paid for it--and are not now--not by
a long way. And further--if we had outgrown this temporary custom of
paying for this--we should still have to serve each other--to live.

If we were all multi-millionaires--and so perfectly "independent"--why
we'd have to have some millionaire sailors and house-builders and
blacksmiths--that's all. Their money would build no houses and sail no
ships.

Service is what counts--giving--the outpouring of strength and
good-will.

That is what Christmas means. It is the Festival of Life. Love and
Service--Loving and Giving--for the Coming Race.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

We have one, a mere sample, left over from last time.

Query: "My wife is spending more of my income on dress than I can
afford. How can I stop her? G.

Answer: G. "By letting her earn her own income and spend it as she
pleases."

G. would never be content with that. G. would get back at us and say--

Query: "How can a woman do her duty as a mother and earn her own
living?"

Answer: "If your wife was doing her duty as a mother she wouldn't be
spending so much money on dress!"

Answer further: Motherhood is "piecework"--it is not done by the hour.
The value of a mother to her children is not to be measured by quantity,
but by quality. If a mother understood any business thoroughly, she
would begin to understand her mother-work better than she does now.

Query: "But how can a mother leave her children and go to work?"

Answer: "She does not have to. She could be a milliner or dressmaker at
home just as well as a cook."

But these problems are general rather than personal. Here is a personal
one.

Query: "I am about thirty--a woman. I wish very much to be married.
All the nice men in our town have left it--or are married. There are
thirty or forty more unmarried women than men. What shall I do? X."

Answer: "Leave that town and go to some place where there are more men.
Go as a matter of business, earning your own living. Keep well, be as
good as you know how, and trust in Providence."

GET YOUR WORK DONE

Get your work DONE, to remember,--
Nothing can take it away,
Then shall the sun of December
Shine brighter than goldenest May.

What is the Spring-time of flowers for?
Why does the sunshine come down?
What are the harvest-day hours for
But fruit? In the fruit is the crown.

Why should we grieve over losses?
Why should we fret over sin?
Death is the smallest of crosses
To the worker whose harvest is in.

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THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon;
dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

_What is it For?_ It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage
and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
make.

_What is it about?_ It is about people, principles, and the questions
of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives
a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

_Is it a Woman's magazine?_ It will treat all three phases of our
existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true
place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important
citizen.

_Is it a Socialist Magazine?_ It is a magazine for humanity, and
humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is
part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious
humanity is to promote Socialization.

_Why is it published?_ It is published to express ideas which need a
special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons
interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser."
The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this
authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will
be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual
experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description
command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be
useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own
statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be
true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette,
fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be
answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
_____ 19___ to _____ 19___

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1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 3
JANUARY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Forgive the Past--and forget it!--don't carry a grudge against
graveyards.
Accept the Present--you have to--here it is.
Concentrate on the Future--still yours to make--and get busy!

A CENTRAL SUN

A Song

Given a central sun--and a rolling world;
Into the light we whirl--and call it day;
Into the dark we turn--and call it night;
Glow of the dawn--glory of midday light--
Shadow of eve--rest of the fragrant night
And the dawn again!

Given a constant Power--and a passing frame;
Into the light we grow--and call it life;
Into the dark we go--and call It death;
Glory of youth--beauty and pride and power--
Shadow of age--rest of the final hour--
And are born again!

REASONABLE RESOLUTIONS

The trouble with our "New Year Resolutions" is that they are too
personal. We are always fussing about our little individual tempers and
weaknesses and bad habits.

While we, Socially, behave as badly as we do, we individually can
accomplish little.

Says the wiseacre--"Ah! but if each of us was individually perfect
Society would be perfect!"

Not at all! You can amass any number of perfect parts of a
mechanism--or organism--but if they do not _work together right_ the
thing is no good.

And you can't learn to work together by trying to be perfect separately.
Can you?

We need collective aims, collective efforts, collective attainments.

Let us collectively resolve:

That we will stop wasting our soil and our forests and our labor!

*

That we will stop poisoning and clogging our rivers and harbors.

*

That we will stop building combustible houses.

*

That we will _now_--_this year_--begin in good earnest to prevent all
preventable diseases.

*

That we will do our duty by our children and young people, as a wise
Society should, and cut off the crop of criminals by not making them.

*

That--; no; here are quite enough resolutions for one year.

HER HOUSEKEEPER

On the top floor of a New York boarding-house lived a particularly
attractive woman who was an actress. She was also a widow, not
divorcee, but just plain widow; and she persisted in acting under her
real name, which was Mrs. Leland. The manager objected, but her
reputation was good enough to carry the point.

"It will cost you a great deal of money, Mrs. Leland," said the manager.

"I make money enough," she answered.

"You will not attract so many--admirers," said the manager.

"I have admirers enough," she answered; which was visibly true.

She was well under thirty, even by daylight--and about eighteen on the
stage; and as for admirers--they apparently thought Mrs. Leland was a
carefully selected stage name.

Besides being a widow, she was a mother, having a small boy of about
five years; and this small boy did not look in the least like a "stage
child," but was a brown-skinned, healthy little rascal of the ordinary
sort.

With this boy, an excellent nursery governess, and a maid, Mrs. Leland
occupied the top floor above mentioned, and enjoyed it. She had a big
room in front, to receive in; and a small room with a skylight, to sleep
in. The boy's room and the governess' rooms were at the back, with
sunny south windows, and the maid slept on a couch in the parlor. She
was a colored lady, named Alice, and did not seem to care where she
slept, or if she slept at all.

"I never was so comfortable in my life," said Mrs. Leland to her
friends. "I've been here three years and mean to stay. It is not like
any boarding-house I ever saw, and it is not like any home I ever had.
I have the privacy, the detachment, the carelessness of a
boarding-house, and 'all the comforts of a home.' Up I go to my little
top flat as private as you like. My Alice takes care of it--the
housemaids only come in when I'm out. I can eat with the others
downstairs if I please; but mostly I don't please; and up come my little
meals on the dumbwaiter--hot and good."

"But--having to flock with a lot of promiscuous boarders!" said her
friends.

"I don't flock, you see; that's just it. And besides, they are not
promiscuous--there isn't a person in the house now who isn't some sort
of a friend of mine. As fast as a room was vacated I'd suggest
somebody--and here we all are. It's great."

"But do you _like_ a skylight room?" Mrs. Leland's friends further
inquired of her?"

"By no means!" she promptly replied. "I hate it. I feel like a mouse
in a pitcher!"

"Then why in the name of reason--?"

"Because I can sleep there! _Sleep_!--It's the only way to be quiet in
New York, and I have to sleep late if I sleep at all. I've fixed the
skylight so that I'm drenched with air--and not drenched with rain!--and
there I am. Johnny is gagged and muffled as it were, and carried
downstairs as early as possible. He gets his breakfast, and the
unfortunate Miss Merton has to go out and play with him--in all
weathers--except kindergarten time. Then Alice sits on the stairs and
keeps everybody away till I ring."

Possibly it was owing to the stillness and the air and the sleep till
near lunchtime that Mrs. Leland kept her engaging youth, her vivid
uncertain beauty. At times you said of her, "She has a keen intelligent
face, but she's not pretty." Which was true. She was not pretty. But
at times again she overcame you with her sudden loveliness.

All of which was observed by her friend from the second floor who wanted
to marry her. In this he was not alone; either as a friend, of whom she
had many, or as a lover, of whom she had more. His distinction lay
first in his opportunities, as a co-resident, for which he was heartily
hated by all the more and some of the many; and second in that he
remained a friend in spite of being a lover, and remained a lover in
spite of being flatly refused.

His name in the telephone book was given "Arthur Olmstead, real estate;"
office this and residence that--she looked him up therein after their
first meeting. He was rather a short man, heavily built, with a quiet
kind face, and a somewhat quizzical smile. He seemed to make all the
money he needed, occupied the two rooms and plentiful closet space of
his floor in great contentment, and manifested most improper domesticity
of taste by inviting friends to tea. "Just like a woman!" Mrs. Leland
told him.

"And why not? Women have so many attractive ways--why not imitate
them?" he asked her.

"A man doesn't want to be feminine, I'm sure," struck in a pallid,
overdressed youth, with openwork socks on his slim feet, and perfumed
handkerchief.

Mr. Olmstead smiled a broad friendly smile. He was standing near the
young man, a little behind him, and at this point he put his hands just
beneath the youth's arms, lifted and set him aside as if he were an
umbrella-stand. "Excuse me, Mr. Masters," he said gravely, but you were
standing on Mrs. Leland's gown."

Mr. Masters was too much absorbed in apologizing to the lady to take
umbrage at the method of his removal; but she was not so oblivious. She
tried doing it to her little boy afterwards, and found him very heavy.

When she came home from her walk or drive in the early winter dusk, this
large quietly furnished room, the glowing fire, the excellent tea and
delicate thin bread and butter were most restful. "It is two more
stories up before I can get my own;" she would say--"I must stop a
minute."

When he began to propose to her the first time she tried to stop him.
"O please don't!" she cried. _"Please_ don't! There are no end of
reasons why I will not marry anybody again. Why can't some of you men
be nice to me and not--that! Now I can't come in to tea any more!"

"I'd like to know why not," said he calmly. "You don't have to marry me
if you don't want to; but that's no reason for cutting my acquaintance,
is it?"

She gazed at him in amazement.

"I'm not threatening to kill myself, am I? I don't intend going to the
devil. I'd like to be your husband, but if I can't--mayn't I be a
brother to you?"

She was inclined to think he was making fun of her, but no--his proposal
had had the real ring in it. "And you're not--you're not going to--?"
it seemed the baldest assumption to think that he was going to, he
looked so strong and calm and friendly.

"Not going to annoy you? Not going to force an undesired affection on
you and rob myself of a most agreeable friendship? Of course not. Your
tea is cold, Mrs. Leland--let me give you another cup. And do you think
Miss Rose is going to do well as 'Angelina?'"

So presently Mrs. Leland was quite relieved in her mind, and free to
enjoy the exceeding comfortableness of this relation. Little Johnny was
extremely fond of Mr Olmstead; who always treated him with respect, and
who could listen to his tales of strife and glory more intelligently
than either mother or governess. Mr. Olmstead kept on hand a changing
supply of interesting things; not toys--never, but real things not
intended for little boys to play with. No little boy would want to play
with dolls for instance; but what little boy would not be fascinated by
a small wooden lay figure, capable of unheard-of contortions. Tin
soldiers were common, but the flags of all nations--real flags, and true
stories about them, were interesting. Noah's arks were cheap and
unreliable scientifically; but Barye lions, ivory elephants, and
Japanese monkeys in didactic groups of three, had unfailing attraction.
And the books this man had--great solid books that could be opened wide
on the floor, and a little boy lie down to in peace and comfort!

Mrs. Leland stirred her tea and watched them until Johnny was taken
upstairs.

"Why don't you smoke?" she asked suddenly. "Doctor's orders?"

"No--mine," he answered. "I never consulted a doctor in my life."

"Nor a dentist, I judge," said she.

"Nor a dentist."

"You'd better knock on wood!" she told him.

"And cry 'Uncle Reuben?' he asked smilingly.

"You haven't told me why you don't smoke!" said she suddenly.

"Haven't I?" he said. "That was very rude of me. But look here.
There's a thing I wanted to ask you. Now I'm not pressing any sort of
inquiry as to myself; but as a brother, would you mind telling me some
of those numerous reasons why you will not marry anybody?"

She eyed him suspiciously, but he was as solid and calm as usual,
regarding her pleasantly and with no hint of ulterior purpose. "Why--I
don't mind," she began slowly. "First--I have been married--and was
very unhappy. That's reason enough."

He did not contradict her; but merely said, "That's one," and set it
down in his notebook.

"Dear me, Mr. Olmstead! You're not a reporter, are you!"

"O no--but I wanted to have them clear and think about them," he
explained. "Do you mind?" And he made as if to shut his little book
again.

"I don't know as I mind," she said slowly. "But it looks
so--businesslike."

"This is a very serious business, Mrs. Leland, as you must know. Quite
aside from any personal desire of my own, I am truly 'your sincere
friend and well-wisher,' as the Complete Letter Writer has it, and there
are so many men wanting to marry you."

This she knew full well, and gazed pensively at the toe of her small
flexible slipper, poised on a stool before the fire.

Mr. Olmstead also gazed at the slipper toe with appreciation.

"What's the next one?" he said cheerfully.

"Do you know you are a real comfort," she told him suddenly. "I never
knew a man before who could--well leave off being a man for a moment and
just be a human creature."

"Thank you, Mrs. Leland," he said in tones of pleasant sincerity. "I
want to be a comfort to you if I can. Incidentally wouldn't you be more
comfortable on this side of the fire--the light falls better--don't
move." And before she realized what he was doing he picked her up,
chair and all, and put her down softly on the other side, setting the
footstool as before, and even daring to place her little feet upon
it--but with so businesslike an air that she saw no opening for rebuke.
It is a difficult matter to object to a man's doing things like that
when he doesn't look as if he was doing them.

"That's better," said he cheerfully, taking the place where she had
been. "Now, what's the next one?"

"The next one is my boy."

"Second--Boy," he said, putting it down. "But I should think he'd be a
reason the other way. Excuse me--I wasn't going to criticize--yet! And
the third?"

"Why should you criticize at all, Mr. Olmstead?"

"I shouldn't--on my own account. But there may come a man you love."
He had a fine baritone voice. When she heard him sing Mrs. Leland
always wished he were taller, handsomer, more distinguished looking; his
voice sounded as if he were. And I should hate to see these reasons
standing in the way of your happiness," he continued.

"Perhaps they wouldn't," said she in a revery.

"Perhaps they wouldn't--and in that case it is no possible harm that you
tell me the rest of them. I won't cast it up at you. Third?"

"Third, I won't give up my profession for any man alive."

"Any man alive would be a fool to want you to," said he setting down,
"Third--Profession."

"Fourth--I like _Freedom!"_ she said with sudden intensity. "You don't
know!--they kept me so tight!--so _tight_--when I was a girl! Then--I
was left alone, with a very little money, and I began to study for the
stage--that was like heaven! And then--O what _idiots_ women are!" She
said the word not tragically, but with such hard-pointed intensity that
it sounded like a gimlet. "Then I married, you see--I gave up all my
new-won freedom to _marry!_--and he kept me tighter than ever." She
shut her expressive mouth in level lines--stood up suddenly and
stretched her arms wide and high. "I'm free again, free--I can do
exactly as I please!" The words were individually relished. "I have
the work I love. I can earn all I need--am saving something for the
boy. I'm perfectly independent!"

"And perfectly happy!" he cordially endorsed her. "I don't blame you
for not wanting to give it up."

"O well--happy!" she hesitated. "There are times, of course, when one
isn't happy. But then--the other way I was unhappy all the time."

"He's dead--unfortunately," mused Mr. Olmstead.

"Unfortunately?--Why?"

He looked at her with his straightforward, pleasant smile. "I'd have
liked the pleasure of killing him," he said regretfully.

She was startled, and watched him with dawning alarm. But he was quite
quiet--even cheerful. "Fourth--Freedom," he wrote. "Is that all?"

"No--there are two more. Neither of them will please you. You won't
think so much of me any more. The worst one is this. I like--lovers!
I'm very much ashamed of it, but I do! I try not to be unfair to
them--some I really try to keep away from me--but honestly I like
admiration and lots of it."

"What's the harm of that?" he asked easily, setting down,
"Fifth--Lovers."

"No harm, so long as I'm my own mistress," said she defiantly. "I take
care of my boy, I take care of myself--let them take care of themselves!
Don't blame me too much!"

"You're not a very good psychologist, I'm afraid," said he.

"What do you mean?" she asked rather nervously.

"You surely don't expect a man to blame you for being a woman, do you?"

"All women are not like that," she hastily asserted. "They are too
conscientious. Lots of my friends blame me severely."

"Women friends," he ventured.

"Men, too. Some men have said very hard things of me."

"Because you turned 'em down. That's natural."

"You don't!"

"No, I don't. I'm different.".

"How different?" she asked.

He looked at her steadily. His eyes were hazel, flecked with changing
bits of color, deep, steady, with a sort of inner light that grew as she
watched till presently she thought it well to consider her slipper
again; and continued, "The sixth is as bad as the other almost. I
hate--I'd like to write a dozen tragic plays to show how much I
hate--Housekeeping! There! That's all!"

"Sixth--Housekeeping," he wrote down, quite unmoved. "But why should
anyone blame you for that--it's not your business."

"No--thank goodness, it's not! And never will be! I'm _free,_ I tell
you and I stay free!--But look at the clock!" And she whisked away to
dress for dinner.

He was not at table that night--not at home that night--not at home for
some days--the landlady said he had gone out of town; and Mrs. Leland
missed her afternoon tea.

She had it upstairs, of course, and people came in--both friends and
lovers; but she missed the quiet and cosiness of the green and brown
room downstairs.

Johnny missed his big friend still more. "Mama, where's Mr. Olmstead?
Mama, why don't Mr. Olmstead come back? Mama! When is Mr. Olmstead
coming back? Mama! Why don't you write to Mr. Olmstead and tell him to
come back? Mama!--can't we go in there and play with his things?"

As if in answer to this last wish she got a little note from him saying
simply, "Don't let Johnny miss the lions and monkeys--he and Miss Merton
and you, of course, are quite welcome to the whole floor. Go in at any
time."

Just to keep the child quiet she took advantage of this offer, and
Johnnie introduced her to all the ins and outs of the place. In a
corner of the bedroom was a zinc-lined tray with clay in it, where
Johnnie played rapturously at making "making country." While he played
his mother noted the quiet good taste and individuality of the place.

"It smells so clean!" she said to herself. "There! he hasn't told me
yet why he doesn't smoke. I never told him I didn't like it."

Johnnie tugged at a bureau drawer. "He keeps the water in here!" he
said, and before she could stop him he had out a little box with bits of
looking-glass in it, which soon became lakes and rivers in his clay
continent.

Mrs. Leland put them back afterward, admiring the fine quality and
goodly number of garments in that drawer, and their perfect order. Her
husband had been a man who made a chowder of his bureau drawers, and who
expected her to find all his studs and put them in for him.

"A man like this would be no trouble at all," she thought for a
moment--but then she remembered other things and set her mouth hard.
"Not for mine!" she said determinedly.

By and by he came back, serene as ever, friendly and unpresuming.

"Aren't you going to tell me why you don't smoke?" she suddenly demanded
of him on another quiet dusky afternoon when tea was before them.

He seemed so impersonal, almost remote, though nicer than ever to
Johnny; and Mrs. Leland rather preferred the personal note in
conservation.

"Why of course I am," he replied cordially. "That's easy," and he
fumbled in his inner pocket.

"Is that where you keep your reasons?" she mischievously inquired.

"It's where I keep yours," he promptly answered, producing the little
notebook. "Now look here--I've got these all answered--you won't be
able to hold to one of 'em after this. May I sit by you and explain?"

She made room for him on the sofa amiably enough, but defied him to
convince her. "Go ahead," she said cheerfully.

"First," he read off, "Previous Marriage. This is not a sufficient
objection. Because you have been married you now know what to choose
and what to avoid. A girl is comparatively helpless in this matter; you
are armed. That your first marriage was unhappy is a reason for trying
it again. It is not only that you are better able to choose, but that
by the law of chances you stand to win next time. Do you admit the
justice of this reasoning?"

"I don't admit anything," she said. "I'm waiting to ask you a
question."

"Ask it now."

"No--I'll wait till you are all through. Do go on."

"'Second--The Boy,'" he continued. "Now Mrs. Leland, solely on the
boy's account I should advise you to marry again. While he is a baby a
mother is enough, but the older he grows the more he will need a father.
Of course you should select a man the child could love--a man who could
love the child."

"I begin to suspect you of deep double-dyed surreptitious designs, Mr.
Olmstead. You know Johnnie loves you dearly. And you know I won't
marry you," she hastily added.

"I'm not asking you to--now, Mrs. Leland. I did, in good faith, and I
would again if I thought I had the shadow of a chance--but I'm not at
present. Still, I'm quite willing to stand as an instance. Now, we
might resume, on that basis. Objection one does not really hold against
me--now does it?"

He looked at her cheerily, warmly, openly; and in his clean, solid
strength and tactful kindness he was so unspeakably different from the
dark, fascinating slender man who had become a nightmare to her youth,
that she felt in her heart he was right--so far. "I won't admit a
thing," she said sweetly. "But, pray go on."

He went on, unabashed. "'Second--Boy,' Now if you married me I should
consider the boy as an added attraction. Indeed--if you do marry
again--someone who doesn't want the boy--I wish you'd give him to me. I
mean it. I think he loves me, and I think I could be of real service to
the child."

He seemed almost to have forgotten her, and she watched him curiously.

"Now, to go on," he continued. "'Third-Profession.' As to your
profession," said he slowly, clasping his hands over one knee and gazing
at the dark soft-colored rug, "if you married me, and gave up your
profession I should find it a distinct loss, I should lose my favorite
actress."

She gave a little start of surprise.

"Didn't you know how much I admire your work?" he said. "I don't hang
around the stage entrance--there are plenty of chappies to do that; and
I don't always occupy a box and throw bouquets--I don't like a box
anyhow. But I haven't missed seeing you in any part you've played
yet--some of 'em I've seen a dozen times. And you're growing--you'll do
better work still. It is sometimes a little weak in the love
parts--seems as if you couldn't quite take it seriously--couldn't let
yourself go--but you'll grow. You'll do better--I really think--after
you're married "

She was rather impressed by this, but found it rather difficult to say
anything; for he was not looking at her at all. He took up his notebook
again with a smile.

"So--if you married me, you would be more than welcome to go on with
your profession. I wouldn't stand in your way any more than I do now.
'Fourth--Freedom,'" he read slowly. "That is easy in one way--hard in
another. If you married me,"--She stirred resentfully at this constant
reference to their marriage; but he seemed purely hypothetical in tone;
"_I_ wouldn't interfere with your freedom any. Not of my own will. But
if you ever grew to love me--or if there were children--it would make
_some_ difference. Not much. There mightn't be any children, and it
isn't likely you'd ever love me enough to have that stand in your way.
Otherwise than that you'd have freedom--as much as now. A little more;
because if you wanted to make a foreign tour, or anything like that, I'd
take care of Johnnie. 'Fifth--Lovers.'" Here he paused leaning forward
with his chin in his hands, his eyes bent down. She could see the broad
heavy shoulders, the smooth fit of the well-made, coat, the spotless
collar, and the fine, strong, clean-cut neck. As it happened she
particularly disliked the neck of the average man--either the cordy, the
beefy or the adipose, and particularly liked this kind, firm and round
like a Roman's, with the hair coming to a clean-cut edge and stopping
there.

"As to lovers," he went on--"I hesitate a little as to what to say about
that. I'm afraid I shall shock you. Perhaps I'd better leave out that
one."

"As insuperable?" she mischievously asked.

"No, as too easy," he answered.

"You'd better explain," she said.

"Well then--it's simply this: as a man--I myself admire you more because
so many other men admire you. I don't sympathize with them, any!--Not
for a minute. Of course, if you loved any one of them you wouldn't be
my wife. But if you were my wife--"

"Well?" said she, a little breathlessly. "You're very irritating! What
would you do? Kill 'em all? Come--If I were your wife?--"

"If you were my wife--" he turned and faced her squarely, his deep eyes
blazing steadily into hers, "In the first place the more lovers you had
that you didn't love the better I'd be pleased."

"And if I did?" she dared him.

"If you were my wife," he purused with perfect quietness, "you would
never love anyone else."

There was a throbbing silence.

"'Sixth--Housekeeping,'" he read.

At this she rose to her feet as if released. "Sixth and last and
all-sufficient!" she burst out, giving herself a little shake as if to
waken. "Final and conclusive and admitting no reply!"--I will not keep
house for any man. Never! Never!! Never!!!"

"Why should you?" he said, as he had said it before; "Why not board?"

"I wouldn't board on any account!"

"But you are boarding now. Aren't you comfortable here?"

"O yes, perfectly comfortable. But this is the only boarding-house I
ever saw that was comfortable."

"Why not go on as we are--if you married me?"

She laughed shrilly. "With the other boarders round them and a whole
floor laid between," she parodied gaily. "No, sir! _If_ I ever married
again--and I wont--I'd want a home of my own--a whole house--and have it
run as smoothly and perfectly as this does. With no more care than I
have now!"

"If I could give you a whole house, like this, and run it for you as
smoothly and perfectly as this one--then would you marry me?" he asked.

"O, I dare say I would," she said mockingly.

"My dear," said he, "I have kept this house--for you--for three years."

"What do you mean?" she demanded, flushingly.

"I mean that it is my business," he answered serenely. "Some men run
hotels and some restaurants: I keep a number of boarding houses and make
a handsome income from them. All the people are comfortable--I see to
that. I planned to have you use these rooms, had the dumbwaiter run to
the top so you could have meals comfortably there. You didn't much like
the first housekeeper. I got one you liked better; cooks to please you,
maids to please you. I have most seriously tried to make you
comfortable. When you didn't like a boarder I got rid of him--or
her--they are mostly all your friends now. Of course if we were
married, we'd fire 'em all." His tone was perfectly calm and business
like. "You should keep your special apartments on top; you should also
have the floor above this, a larger bedroom, drawing-room, and bath and
private parlor for you;--I'd stay right here as I am now--and when you
wanted me--I'd be here."

She stiffened a little at this rather tame ending. She was stirred,
uneasy, dissatisfied. She felt as if something had been offered and
withdrawn; something was lacking.

"It seems such a funny business--for a man," she said.

"Any funnier than Delmonico's?" he asked. "It's a business that takes
some ability--witness the many failures. It is certainly useful. And
it pays--amazingly."

"I thought it was real estate," she insisted.

"It is. I'm in a real estate office. I buy and sell houses--that's how
I came to take this up!"

He rose up, calmly and methodically, walked over to the fire, and laid
his notebook on it. "There wasn't any strength in any of those
objections, my dear," said he. "Especially the first one. Previous
marriage, indeed! You have never been married before. You are going to
be--now."

It was some weeks after that marriage that she suddenly turned upon
him--as suddenly as one can turn upon a person whose arms are about
one--demanding.

"And why don't you smoke?--You never told me!"

"I shouldn't like to kiss you so well if you smoked!"--said he.

"I never had any idea," she ventured after a while, "that it could
be--like this."

LOCKED INSIDE

She beats upon her bolted door,
With faint weak hands;
Drearily walks the narrow floor;
Sullenly sits, blank walls before;
Despairing stands.

Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain--
Her dreams respond;
But the blank daylights wax and wane,
Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain--
No hope beyond.

Till she comes a thought! She lifts her head,
The world grows wide!
A voice--as if clear words were said--
"Your door, o long imprisoned,
Is locked inside!"

PRIVATE MORALITY AND PUBLIC IMMORALITY

There is more sense in that convenient trick of blaming "the old Adam"
for our misbehavior than some of us have thought. That most culpable
sinner we no longer see as a white-souled adult baby, living on uncooked
food in a newmade garden, but as a husky, hairy, highly carnivorous and
bloodthirsty biped, just learning his giant strength, and exercising it
like a giant.

Growing self-conscious and intelligent, he developed an ethical sense,
and built up system after system of morals, all closely calculated to
advance his interests in this world or the next. The morals of the
early Hebrews, for instance, with which we are most familiar, were
strictly adjusted to their personal profit; their conception of Diety
definitely engaging to furnish protection and reward in return for
specified virtuous conduct.

This is all reasonable and right in its way. If good conduct were not
ultimately advantageous it would not be good. The difficulty with the
ancient scheme of morality lies in its narrow range. "The soul that
sinneth it shall die," is the definite statement; the individual is the
one taken to task, threatened, promised, exhorted and punished. Our
whole race-habit of thought on questions of morality is personal. When
goodness is considered it is "my" goodness or "your" goodness--not ours;
and sins are supposed to be promptly traceable to sinners; visible,
catchable, hangable sinners in the flesh. We have no mental machinery
capable of grasping the commonest instances of collective sin; large,
public continuing sin, to which thousands contribute, for generations
upon generations; and under the consequences of which more thousands
suffer for succeeding centuries. Yet public evils are what society
suffer from most to-day, and must suffer from most in increasing ratio,
as years pass.

In concrete instance, we are most definitely clear as to the verb "to
steal." This is wrong. It says so in the Bible. It if a very simple
commandment. If a man steals he is a thief. And our law following
slowly along after our moral sense, punishes stealing. But it is one
man stealing from one other man who is a thief. It is the personal
attack upon personal property, done all at once, which we can see, feel,
and understand. Let a number of men in combination gradually alienate
the property of a number of other men--a very large number of other men,
and our moral sense makes no remark. This is not intended in any ironic
sense--it is a plain fact, a physiological, or psychological fact.

The racial mind, long accustomed to attach moral values to personal acts
only, cannot, without definite effort, learn to attach them to
collective acts. We can do it, in crude instances, when mere numbers
are in question and the offence is a plain one. If a number of men in a
visible moving group commit murder or arson before our eyes, we had as
lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and
responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap
tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting of the fire
hose--then we are at fault. The cringing wretch who lit the oilsoaked
rags in the cellar we seize in triumph. He did it. Him we can hang.
"The soul that sinneth it shall die." But if the fire is "an accident,"
owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give
away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble
prematurely--who can we lay hands on? Where is the soul that sinneth?

Our brains are not trained to follow a complex moral relation; we travel
in the deep ruts of mental habit as old as Adam aforesaid. Our sense of
duty, of obligation, of blame or praise is all hopelessly egotistic.
"Who is to blame?" we continue to say; when we should say, "Who are to
blame?" One heavy dose of poison resulting in one corpse shows us
murder. A thousand tiny doses of poison, concealed in parcels of food,
resulting in the lowered vitality, increased illness and decreased
efficiency of thousands of persons, shows us nothing. There is need
to-day for very honest mental effort in readjusting our moral sense so
that we may recognize social evils, social offenders and social
responsibility.

Here we are all together, rising and falling in masses under the
influence of other person's conduct, with no possibility of tracing the
death of this particular baby to the dirty hands of that particular
milker of far-off cows. It wasn't murder--he never saw the baby. You
can't hang a man for not washing his hands. We see babies die, look in
vain for the soul that sinneth, and do nothing.

We should have a poor opinion of any state where there was no moral
sense ai all, no weight of public opinion to uphold standards, no
measures to protect innocence and punish crime. This we should call
barbarism or savagery, and feel proud of our Christian civilization,
where we legislate so profusely and punish so severely--when we can lay
hands on individual offenders, whose crimes, though small, are at least
whole ones. But we are in precisely that state of barbarism in regard
to the fractional crimes of our complex social life.

If seven doctors in succession refuse to answer a poor man's call and he
dies for lack of medical aid--who has killed him? Has he seven
murderers--or is each doctor one-seventh of a murderer? Or is it not
murder at all just to let a man die?

If again, the doctor does his duty and the man dies because the
medicine given him was different from what the doctor ordered--a
cheaper, weaker drug, an adulteration or substitute--then who killed
him? The druggist who sold--the clerk who put up the prescription--the
advertiser of the stuff--the manufacturer of it--or those who live on
money invested in the manufacturing company? "The clerk!" we cry,
delightedly. "He put up the poison! He knew it was not what was
ordered! He did it with his hands!" "The soul that sinneth _it_ shall
die." And perhaps it does--or at least the body of it. Yet the same
drug goes on poisoning.

We might perhaps pass on from that shaggy Adam of our remote past and
his necessary limitations, and begin to study the real relation of human
beings in modern life, learning at last that human conduct changes as
society develops, that morality is no longer a mere matter of "thou
shalt" and "thou shalt not," but a vast complex of mutually interactive
conduct in which personal responsibility has small place.

Take an evil like our railroad management with its yearly tale of
bloodshed and dismemberment, its hundreds and thousands of killed and
wounded. We cannot pick out and hang a director or president when the
dead brakeman is dragged out from between the cars that did not have
automatic couplers. The man is dead, is killed, is murdered--but we
cannot fix responsibility. Can we arrest for murder the poor mother who
is caring for her boy sick with typhoid fever; just because she empties
slops on a watershed that feeds a little brook, that feeds a river, that
feeds a city--and thousands die of that widespread disease? She is not
personally guilty of murder. There are others in plenty between her and
the victim and many back of her to blame for her ignorance. Who can
untangle the responsibility for the ruin of a girl who was utterly
untaught, underpaid, improperly dressed, ill-fed, influenced by every
gorgeously dressed idle woman who stood before her counter, and tempted
by many men in turn? There is the one "sin"--but is she the only
"sinner"?

Consider the two awful instances of recent date--the Iroquois Theatre
fire in Chicago, the Slocum disaster in New York. Even if it were
possible to "fix responsibility," to find the one person, or more than
one whom we could prove to blame for these holocausts, what could we do
to these persons as fit punishment for such an injury to society? If we
could devise tortures prolonged and painful enough to make such
criminals feel as felt their dying victims, what good would that do? It
would raise no dead, restore no health, prevent no repetition of similar
horrors. That much has been established by the history of our primitive
systems--punishment does not prevent.

What does?

Here is the real question for society to ask--Adam did not know enough.
The age of personal morals is the age of personal punishment. The age
of recognized public evils is the age of prevention. This we are
beginning to see, beginning to do. After the Iroquois fire we were more
stringent in guarding our theatres. After the Slocum disaster the
inspection of steamships was more thorough. After the slaughter of the
innocents in the burning schoolhouse, many other school buildings were
condemned and more were safeguarded.

But this is only a beginning--a feeble, temporary, ineffectual effort.
Social morality does not consist in spasmodic attempts to be good,
following upon some terrible catastrophe. A mother's duty to a child is
not mere passionate protection after it has fallen through the ice; the
soldier's duty is not confined to wild efforts to recover the flag after
it has been lost. We have a constant definite active duty to society,
each one of us; there lies our responsibility and failing therein is our
fault.

When men or women fail in full honest efficient performance of their
social service, which means their special kind of work, they sin--if we
must call it sin--against society. Better drop the very name and
thought of "sin" and say merely, "Why are we to-day so inefficient and
unreliable in our social duty?" For reason good. We are not taught
social duty. For further reason that we are taught much that militates
against it. Our social instinct is not yet strong enough to push and
pull us into perfect relation with one another without conscious effort.
We need to be taught from infancy, which way our duty lies--the most
imperative duty of a human creature--to give his life's best service to
humanity.

This would call for new standards in the nursery, the school and the
shop, as well as the platform, press and pulpit. That is our crying
need; a truer standard of duty, and the proper development of it. The
School City is a step this way, a long one; as is the George Junior
Republic and other specific instances of effort to bring out the social
sense.

But it is in our work that we need it most. From babyhood we should be
taught that we are here dependent on one another, beautifully
specialized that we may serve one another; owing to the State, our great
centralized body, the whole service of our lives. What every common
soldier knows and most of them practice is surely not too difficult for
a common business man. Our public duty is most simple and clear--to do
our best work for the service of the world. And our personal sin--the
one sin against humanity--is to let that miserable puny outgrown
Ego--our exaggerated sense of personality--divert us from that service.

[Untitled]

With God Above--Beneath--Beside--
Without--Within--and Everywhere;
Rising with the resistless tide
Of life, and Sure of Getting There.

Patient with Nature's long delay,
Proud of our conscious upward swing;
Not sorry for a single day,
And Not Afraid of Anything!

With Motherhood at last awake--
With Power to Do and Light to See--
Women may now begin to Make
The People we are Meant to Be!

THE HUMANNESS OF WOMEN

A woman by the river's brim,
A wife and servant is to him--
And she is nothing more.

We have made mistakes, as old as humanity, about the world, and about
women.

First, as to the world:

This we have assumed to be a general battlefield for men to struggle in;
a place for free competition; full of innumerable persons whose natural
mode of life was to struggle, for existence, with one another.

This is the individualist view, and is distinctly masculine.

Males are essentially individualistic--born to vary and compete; and an
exclusively masculine world must be individualistic and competitive.

We have been wrong. The new Social Philosophy recognizes Society as an
orderly life-form, having its own laws of growth; and that we, as
individuals, live only as active parts of Society. Instead of accepting
this world of warfare, disease, and crime, of shameful, unnecessary
poverty and pain, as natural and right, we now see that all these evils
may be removed, and we propose to remove them. Humanity is waking up,
is beginning to understand its own nature, is beginning to face a new
and a possible problem, instead of the dark enigma of the past.

Second, as to the woman:

Our mistake about her was a very strange one. No one knows yet how or
why it was made; yet there it stands; one of the most colossal blunders
ever made by mankind. In the face of all creation, where the female is
sometimes found quite self-sufficient, often superior, and always equal
to the male, our human race set up the "andro-centric theory," holding
that man alone is the race type; and that woman was "his female." In
what "Mr. Venus" described as "the vicious pride of his youth," our
budding humanity distinguished itself by discrediting its mother. "You
are a female," said Ancient Man, "and that's all. We are the People!"

This is the alpha and omega of the old idea about woman. It saw in her
only sex--not Humanity.

The New Woman is Human first, last and always. Incidentally she is
female; as man is male. As a male he has done his small share in the
old physical process of reproduction; but as a Human Creature he has
done practically all in the new Social processes which make
civilization.

He has been Male--and Human:--She has been Female--and nothing
else;--that is, in our old idea.

Holding this idea; absurd, erroneous, and mischievous to a terrible
degree; we strove to carry it out in our behavior; and human history so
far is the history of a wholly masculine world, competing and fighting
as males must, forever seeking and serving the female as males must, yet
building this our world as best they could alone.

Theirs is the credit--and the shame--of the world behind us, the world
around us; but the world before us has a new element--the Humanness of
Woman.

For a little over a century we have become increasingly conscious of a
stir, an uprising, and protest among women. The long-suppressed "better
half" of humanity has begun to move and push and lift herself. This
Woman's movement is as natural, as beneficial, as irresistible as the
coming of spring; but it has been misunderstood and opposed from the
first by the glacial moraine of old ideas, the inert force of sheer
blank ignorance, and prejudice as old as Adam.

At first the women strove for a little liberty, for education; then for
some equality before the law, for common justice; then, with larger
insight, for full equal rights with men in every human field; and as
essential base of these, for the right of suffrage.

Woman suffrage is but one feature of the movement, but it is a most
important one. The opposition to it is wholly one of sex-prejudice, of
feeling, not of reason; the opposition of a masculine world; and of an
individualism also masculine. The male is physiologically an
individualist. It is his place in nature to vary, to introduce new
characteristics, and to strive mightily with his rivals for the favor of
the females. A world of males must fight.

With the whole of history of this combative sort; with masculinity and
humanity identical, in the average mind; there is something alien,
unnatural, even revolting, in the claim of woman to her share in the
work and management of the world. Against it he brings up one constant
cry--that woman's progress will injure womanhood. All that he sees in
woman is her sex; and he opposes her advance on the ground that "as a
woman" she is unfit to take part in "a man's world"--and that if she
did, it would mysteriously but inevitably injure her "as a woman."

Suggest that she might be able to take part in "a woman's world,"--and
has as much right to a world made her way as he has to his man-made
world! Suggest that without any such extreme reversal, she has a right
to half the world; half the work, half the pay, half the care, half the
glory!

To all this replies the Male-individualist:

"The World has to be as it is. It is a place to fight in; fight for
life, fight for money. Work is for slaves and poor people generally.
Nobody would work unless they had to. You are females and no part of
the world at all. Your place is at home: to bear and rear children--and
to cook."

Now what is the position toward women of this new philosophy that sees
Society as one thing, and the main thing to be considered; that sees the
world as a place open to ceaseless change and improvement; that sees the
way so to change and improve it that the major part of our poor silly
sins and sorrows will disappear utterly for lack of cause?

From this viewpoint male and female fall into two lower positions, both
right and proper; useful, beautiful, essential for the replenishment of
the race on earth. From this viewpoint men and women rise, together,
from that lower relation, to the far higher one of Humanness, that
common Humanness which is hers as much as his. Seeing Society as the
real life-form; and our individual lives as growing in glory and power
as we serve and develop Society; the movement of women becomes of
majestic importance. It is the advance of an entire half the race, from
a position of arrested development, into full humanness.

The world is no longer seen as a battlefield, where it is true, women do
not belong; but as a garden--a school--a church--a home, where they
visibly do belong. In the great task of cultivating the earth they have
an equal interest and an equal power. Equality is not identity. There
is work of all kinds and sizes--and half of it is woman's.

In that vast labor of educating humanity, till all of us understand one
another; till the thoughts and feelings necessary to our progress can
flow smooth and clear through the world-mind, women have preeminent
part. They are the born teachers, by virtue of their motherhood, as
well as in the human joy of it.

In the power of organization which is essential to our progress we have
special need of women, and their rapid and universal movement in this
direction is one of the most satisfactory proofs of our advance. In
every art, craft and profession they have the same interests, the same
power. We rob the world of half its service when we deny women their
share in it.

In direct political action there is every reason for women's voting that
there is for men's; and every reason for a spreading universal suffrage
that there is for democracy. As far as any special power in government
is called for, the mother is the natural ruler, the natural
administrator and executive. The functions of democratic government may
be wisely and safely shared between men and women.

Here we have our great position fairly before us:--the improvement of
the world is ours to make; women are coming forward to help make it;
women are human with every human power; democracy is the highest form of
government--so far; and the use of the ballot is essential to democracy;
therefore women should vote!

Against this rises the tottering fortress of the ultra-masculine,
abetted by a petty handful of witless traitors--those petticoated
creatures who also see in women nothing but their sex. They may be, in
some cases, honest in their belief; but their honesty does no credit to
their intelligence. They are obsessed by this dominant idea of sex; due
clearly enough to the long period of male dominance--to our androcentric
culture. The male naturally sees in the female, sex; first, last and
always. For all these centuries she has been restricted to the exercise
of feminine duties only, with the one addition of house-service.

The wife-and-mother sex, the servant sex, she is to him; and nothing
more. The woman does not look at men in this light. She has to
consider them as human creatures, because they monopolize the human
functions. She does not consider the motorman and conductor as males,
but as promotors of travel; she does not chuck the bellboy under the
chin and kiss the waiter!

Inextricably mingled with the masculine view is the individualist view,
seeing the world forever and ever as a place of struggle.

Then comes this great change of our time, the dawning of the Social
consciousness. Here is a world of combination, of ordered grouping and
inter-service. Here is a world now wasting its wealth like water--all
this waste may be saved. Here is a world of worse than unnecessary war.
We will stop this warfare. Here is a world of hideous diseases. We
will exterminate them. Here is a world of what we call "Sin"--almost
all of which is due to Ignorance, Ill-health, Unhappiness, Injustice.

When the world learns how to take care of itself decently; when there
are no dirty evil places upon it, with innocent children born daily and
hourly into conditions which inevitably produce a certain percentage of
criminality; when the intelligence and good breeding which now
distinguish some of us are common to all of us--we shan't hear so much
about sin!

A socially conscious world, intelligent, courageous, earnest to improve
itself, seeking to establish a custom of peaceful helpful
interservice--such a world has no fear of woman, and no feeling that she
is unfit to participate in its happy labors. The new social philosophy
welcomes woman suffrage.

*

But suppose you are not in any sense Socialistically inclined. Suppose
you are still an Individualist, albeit a believer in votes for women.
Even so, merely from the woman's point of view, enough can be said to
justify the promise of a New World.

What makes the peace and beauty of the Home--its
order--comfort--happiness?--the Woman.

Her service is given, not hired. Her attitude is of one seeking to
administer a common fund for the common good. She does not set her
children to compete for their dinner--does not give most to the
strongest and leave the weakest to go to the wall. It is only in her
lowest helplessness; under the degrading influence of utter poverty,
that she is willing to exploit her children and let them work before
their time.

If she, merely as Woman, merely as wife and mother, comes forward to
give the world the same service she has given the home, it will be
wholly to its advantage.

Go and look at the legislation initiated or supported by women in every
country where women vote--and you will see one unbroken line of social
service. Not self-interest--not mercenary profit--not competition; but
one steady upward pressure; the visible purpose to uplift and help the
world.

This world is ours as much as man's. We have not only a right to half
its management but a duty to half its service. It is our duty as human
beings to help make the world better--quickly! It is our duty as Women
to bring our Motherhood to comfort and help humanity--our children every
one!

HERE IS THE EARTH

Here is the earth: As big, as fresh, as clean,
As when it first grew green;
Our little spots of dirt walled in,
As easy to outgrow as sin,
In the swift, sweet, triumphal hour
Of nature's power.

We have not hurt the world: Still safe we rest
On that great loving breast.
Proud, patient mother! Strong and still!
Our little years of doing ill
Lost in her smooth, unmeasured time
Of life sublime.

We need not grieve, nor kneel our faults to own;
She has not even known
That we offended! Our misdeeds
She covers with one summer's weeds:
Her love we thought so long away--
Is ours to-day.

And here are we. Our bodies are as new
As ever Adam grew:
Replenished still with daily touch,
By the fair mother, loving much.
Glad living things! Still conscious part
Of earth's rich heart!

And for the soul which these fair bodies give
Increasing room to live--?
It is the same soul that was born
In the dim, lovely, unknown morn
Of Nature's waking--the same soul--
Still here, and whole!

Strong? `Tis the force that governs ring on ring
Where quiet planets swing.
Glad? `Tis the joy of riotous flowers
And meadow-larks in May, now ours,
Ours endlessly--to have--to give--
To all who live!

No grief behind have we, no fear before
But only more and more
The splendid passion of the soul
In new creation to unroll:
All life, poured new in all the lands,
Through our glad hands!

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER III.

BREAKERS

Duck! Dive! Here comes another one!
Wait till the crest-ruffles show!
Beyond is smooth water in beauty and wonder--
Shut your mouth! Hold your breath! Dip your head under!
Dive through the weight and the wash, and the thunder--
Look out for the undertow!

If Diantha imagined that her arithmetical victory over a too-sordid
presentation of the parental claim was a final one, she soon found
herself mistaken.

It is easy to say--putting an epic in an epigram--"She seen her duty and
she done it!" but the space and time covered are generally as far beyond
our plans as the estimates of an amateur mountain climber exceed his
achievements.

Her determination was not concealed by her outraged family. Possibly
they thought that if the matter was well aired, and generally discussed,
the daring offender might reconsider. Well-aired it certainly was, and
widely discussed by the parents of the little town before young people
who sat in dumbness, or made faint defense. It was also discussed by
the young people, but not before their parents.

She had told Ross, first of all, meaning to have a quiet talk with him
to clear the ground before arousing her own family; but he was suddenly
away just as she opened the subject, by a man on a wheel--some wretched
business about the store of course--and sent word that night that he
could not come up again. Couldn't come up the next night either. Two
long days--two long evenings without seeing him. Well--if she went away
she'd have to get used to that.

But she had so many things to explain, so much to say to make it right
with him; she knew well what a blow it was. Now it was all over
town--and she had had no chance to defend her position.

The neighbors called. Tall bony Mrs. Delafield who lived nearest to
them and had known Diantha for some years, felt it her duty to make a
special appeal--or attack rather; and brought with her stout Mrs.
Schlosster, whose ancestors and traditions were evidently of German
extraction.

Diantha retired to her room when she saw these two bearing down upon the
house; but her mother called her to make a pitcher of lemonade for
them--and having entered there was no escape. They harried her with
questions, were increasingly offended by her reticence, and expressed
disapproval with a fullness that overmastered the girl's self-control.

"I have as much right to go into business as any other citizen, Mrs.
Delafield," she said with repressed intensity. "I am of age and live in
a free country. What you say of children no longer applies to me."

"And what is this mysterious business you're goin' into--if one may
inquire? Nothin you're ashamed to mention, I hope?" asked Mrs.
Delafield.

"If a woman refuses to mention her age is it because she's ashamed of
it?" the girl retorted, and Mrs. Delafield flushed darkly.

"Never have I heard such talk from a maiden to her elders," said Mrs.
Schlosster. "In my country the young have more respect, as is right."

Mrs. Bell objected inwardly to any reprimand of her child by others; but
she agreed to the principle advanced and made no comment.

Diantha listened to quite a volume of detailed criticism, inquiry and
condemnation, and finally rose to her feet with the stiff courtesy of
the young.

"You must excuse me now," she said with set lips. "I have some
necessary work to do."

She marched upstairs, shut her bedroom door and locked it, raging
inwardly. "Its none of their business! Not a shadow! Why should
Mother sit there and let them talk to me like that! One would think
childhood had no limit--unless it's matrimony!"

This reminded her of her younger sister's airs of superior wisdom, and
did not conduce to a pleasanter frame of mind. "With all their
miserable little conventions and idiocies! And what 'they'll say,' and
'they'll think'! As if I cared! Minnie'll be just such another!"

She heard the ladies going out, still talking continuously, a faint
response from her mother now and then, a growing quiet as their steps
receded toward the gate; and then another deeper voice took up the theme
and heavily approached.

It was the minister! Diantha dropped into her rocker and held the arms
tight. "Now I'll have to take it again I suppose. But he ought to know
me well enough to understand."

"Diantha!" called her mother, "Here's Dr. Major;" and the girl washed
her face and came down again.

Dr. Major was a heavy elderly man with a strong mouth and a warm hand
clasp. "What's all this I hear about you, young lady?" he demanded,
holding her hand and looking her straight in the eye. "Is this a new
kind of Prodigal Daughter we're encountering?"

He did not look nor sound condemnatory, and as she faced him she caught
a twinkle in the wise old eyes.

"You can call it that if you want to," she said, "Only I thought the
Prodigal Son just spent his money--I'm going to earn some."

"I want you to talk to Diantha, Doctor Major," Mrs. Bell struck in.
"I'm going to ask you to excuse me, and go and lie down for a little. I
do believe she'll listen to you more than to anybody."

The mother retired, feeling sure that the good man who had known her
daughter for over fifteen years would have a restraining influence now;
and Diantha braced herself for the attack.

It came, heavy and solid, based on reason, religion, tradition, the
custom of ages, the pastoral habit of control and protection, the
father's instinct, the man's objection to a girl's adventure. But it
was courteous, kind, and rationally put, and she met it point by point
with the whole-souled arguments of a new position, the passionate
enthusiasm of her years.

They called a truce.

"I can see that you _think_ its your duty, young, woman--that's the main
thing. I think you're wrong. But what you believe to be right you have
to do. That's the way we learn my dear, that's the way we learn!
Well--you've been a good child ever since I've known you. A remarkably
good child. If you have to sow this kind of wild oats--" they both
smiled at this, "I guess we can't stop you. I'll keep your secret--"

"Its not a secret really," the girl explained, "I'll tell them as soon
as I'm settled. Then they can tell--if they want to." And they both
smiled again.

"Well--I won't tell till I hear of it then. And--yes, I guess I can
furnish that document with a clean conscience."

She gave him paper and pen and he wrote, with a grin, handing her the
result.

She read it, a girlish giggle lightening the atmosphere. "Thank you!"
she said earnestly. "Thank you ever so much. I knew you would help
me."

"If you get stuck anywhere just let me know," he said rising. "This
Proddy Gal may want a return ticket yet!"

"I'll walk first!" said Diantha.

"O Dr. Major," cried her mother from the window, "Don't go! We want you
to stay to supper of course!"

But he had other calls to make, he said, and went away, his big hands
clasped behind him; his head bent, smiling one minute and shaking his
head the next.

Diantha leaned against a pearly eucalyptus trunk and watched him. She
would miss Dr. Major. But who was this approaching? Her heart sank
miserably. Mrs. Warden--and _all_ the girls.

She went to meet them--perforce. Mrs. Warden had always been kind and
courteous to her; the girls she had not seen very much of, but they had
the sweet Southern manner, were always polite. Ross's mother she must
love. Ross's sisters too--if she could. Why did the bottom drop out of
her courage at sight of them?

"You dear child!" said Mrs. Warden, kissing her. "I know just how you
feel! You want to help my boy! That's your secret! But this won't do
it, my dear!"

"You've no idea how badly Ross feels!" said Madeline. "Mrs. Delafield
dropped in just now and told us. You ought to have seen him!"

"He didn't believe it of course," Adeline put in. "And he wouldn't say
a thing--not a thing to blame you."

"We said we'd come over right off--and tried to bring him--but he said
he'd got to go back to the store," Coraline explained.

"He was mad though!" said Dora--"_I_ know."

Diantha looked from one to the other helplessly.

"Come in! Come in!" said Mrs. Bell hospitably. "Have this rocker, Mrs.
Warden--wouldn't you like some cool drink? Diantha?"

"No indeed!" Mrs. Warden protested. "Don't get a thing. We're going
right back, it's near supper time. No, we can't think of staying, of
course not, no indeed!--But we had to come over and hear about this dear
child's idea!--Now tell us all about it, Diantha!"

There they sat--five pairs of curious eyes--and her mother's sad
ones--all kind--all utterly incapable of understanding.

She moistened her lips and plunged desperately. "It is nothing
dreadful, Mrs. Warden. Plenty of girls go away to earn their livings
nowadays. That is all I'm doing."

"But why go away?"

"I thought you were earning your living before!"

"Isn't teaching earning your living?"

"What _are_ you going to do?" the girls protested variously, and Mrs.
Warden, with a motherly smile, suggested--

"That doesn't explain your wanting to leave Ross, my dear--and your
mother!"

"I don't want to leave them," protested Diantha, trying to keep her
voice steady. "It is simply that I have made up my mind I can do better
elsewhere."

"Do what better?" asked Mrs. Warden with sweet patience, which reduced
Diantha to the bald statement, "Earn more money in less time."

"And is that better than staying with your mother and your lover?"
pursued the gentle inquisitor; while the girls tried, "What do you want
to earn more money for?" and "I thought you earned a lot before."

Now Diantha did not wish to state in so many words that she wanted more
money in order to marry sooner--she had hardly put it to herself that
way. She could not make them see in a few moments that her plan was to
do far more for her mother than she would otherwise ever be able to.
And as to making them understand the larger principles at stake--the
range and depth of her full purpose--that would be physically
impossible.

"I am sorry!" she said with trembling lips. "I am extremely sorry.
But--I cannot explain!"

Mrs. Warden drew herself up a little. "Cannot explain to me?--Your
mother, of course, knows?"

"Diantha is naturally more frank with me than with--anyone," said Mrs.
Bell proudly, "But she does not wish her--business--plans--made public
at present!"

Her daughter looked at her with vivid gratitude, but the words "made
public" were a little unfortunate perhaps.

"Of course," Mrs. Warden agreed, with her charming smile, "that we can
quite understand. I'm sure I should always wish my girls to feel so.
Madeline--just show Mrs. Bell that necktie you're making--she was asking
about the stitch, you remember."

The necktie was produced and admired, while the other girls asked
Diantha if she had her fall dressmaking done yet--and whether she found
wash ribbon satisfactory. And presently the whole graceful family
withdrew, only Dora holding her head with visible stiffness.

Diantha sat on the floor by her mother, put her head in her lap and
cried. "How splendid of you, Mother!" she sobbed. "How simply
splendid! I will tell you now--if--if--you won't tell even
Father--yet."

"Dear child" said her Mother, "I'd rather not know in that case. It
is--easier."

"That's what I kept still for!" said the girl. "It's hard enough,
goodness knows--as it is! Its nothing wicked, or even risky, Mother
dear--and as far as I can see it is right!"

Her mother smiled through her tears. "If you say that, my dear child, I
know there's no stopping you. And I hate to argue with you--even for
your own sake, because it is so much to my advantage to have you here.
I--shall miss you--Diantha!"

"Don't, Mother!" sobbed the girl.

"Its natural for the young to go. We expect it--in time. But you are
so young yet--and--well, I had hoped the teaching would satisfy you till
Ross was ready."

Diantha sat up straight.

"Mother! can't you see Ross'll never be ready! Look at that family!
And the way they live! And those mortgages! I could wait and teach and
save a little even with Father always losing money; but I can't see Ross
wearing himself out for years and years--I just _can't_ bear it!"

Her mother stroked her fair hair softly, not surprised that her own plea
was so lost in thought of the brave young lover.

"And besides," the girl went on "If I waited--and saved--and married
Ross--what becomes of _you,_ I'd like to know? What I can't stand is to
have you grow older and sicker--and never have any good time in all your
life!"

Mrs. Bell smiled tenderly. "You dear child!" she said; as if an
affectionate five-year old had offered to get her a rainbow, "I know you
mean it all for the best. But, O my _dearest_! I'd rather have
you--here--at home with me---than any other 'good time' you can
imagine!"

She could not see the suffering in her daughter's face; but she felt she
had made an impression, and followed it up with heart-breaking
sincerity. She caught the girl to her breast and held her like a little
child. "O my baby! my baby! Don't leave your mother. I can't bear
it!"

A familiar step outside, heavy, yet uncertain, and they both looked at
each other with frightened eyes.

They had forgotten the biscuit.

"Supper ready?" asked Mr. Bell, with grim humor.

"It will be in a moment, Father," cried Diantha springing to her feet.
"At least--in a few moments."

"Don't fret the child, Father," said Mrs. Henderson softly. "She's
feeling bad enough."

"Sh'd think she would," replied her husband. "Moreover--to my mind--she
ought to."

He got out the small damp local paper and his pipe, and composed himself
in obvious patience: yet somehow this patience seemed to fill the
kitchen, and to act like a ball and chain to Diantha's feet.

She got supper ready, at last, making griddle-cakes instead of biscuit,
and no comment was made of the change: but the tension in the atmosphere
was sharply felt by the two women; and possibly by the tall old man, who
ate less than usual, and said absolutely nothing.

"I'm going over to see Edwards about that new incubator," he said when
the meal was over, and departed; and Mrs. Bell, after trying in vain to
do her mending, wiped her clouded glasses and went to bed.

Diantha made all neat and tidy; washed her own wet eyes again, and went
out under the moon. In that broad tender mellow light she drew a deep
breath and stretched her strong young arms toward the sky in dumb
appeal.

"I knew it would be hard," she murmured to herself, "That is I knew the
facts--but I didn't know the feeling!"

She stood at the gate between the cypresses, sat waiting under the
acacia boughs, walked restlessly up and down the path outside, the dry
pepper berries crush softly under foot; bracing herself for one more
struggle--and the hardest of all.

"He will understand!" he told herself, over and over, but at the bottom
of her heart she knew he wouldn't.

He came at last; a slower, wearier step than usual; came and took both
her hands in his and stood holding them, looking at her questioningly.
Then he held her face between his palms and made her look at him. Her
eyes were brave and steady, but the mouth trembled in spite of her.

He stilled it with a kiss, and drew her to a seat on the bench beside
him. "My poor Little Girl! You haven't had a chance yet to really tell
me about this thing, and I want you to right now. Then I'm going to
kill about forty people in this town! _Somebody_ has been mighty
foolish."

She squeezed his hand, but found it very difficult to speak. His love,
his sympathy, his tenderness, were so delicious after this day's
trials--and before those further ones she could so well anticipate. She
didn't wish to cry any more, that would by no means strengthen her
position, and she found she couldn't seem to speak without crying.

"One would think to hear the good people of this town that you were
about to leave home and mother for--well, for a trip to the moon!" he
added. "There isn't any agreement as to what you're going to do, but
they're unanimous as to its being entirely wrong. Now suppose you tell
me about it."

"I will," said Diantha. "I began to the other night, you know, you
first of course--it was too bad! your having to go off at that exact
moment. Then I had to tell mother--because--well you'll see presently.
Now dear--just let me say it _all_--before you--do anything."

"Say away, my darling. I trust you perfectly."

She flashed a grateful look at him. "It is this way, my dear. I have
two, three, yes four, things to consider:--My own personal problem--my
family's--yours--and a social one."

"My family's?" he asked, with a faint shade of offence in his tone.

"No no dear--your own," she explained.

"Better cut mine out, Little Girl," he said. "I'll consider that
myself."

"Well--I won't talk about it if you don't want me to. There are the
other three."

"I won't question your second, nor your imposing third, but isn't the
first one--your own personal problem--a good deal answered?" he
suggested, holding her close for a moment.

"Don't!" she said. "I can't talk straight when you put it that way."

She rose hurriedly and took a step or two up and down. "I don't
suppose--in spite of your loving me, that I can make you see it as I do.
But I'll be just as clear as I can. There are some years before us
before we can be together. In that time I intend to go away and
undertake a business I am interested in. My purpose is to--develop the
work, to earn money, to help my family, and to--well, not to hinder
you."

"I don't understand, I confess," he said. "Don't you propose to tell me
what this 'work' is?"

"Yes--I will--certainly. But not yet dear! Let me try to show you how
I feel about it."

"Wait," said he. "One thing I want to be sure of. Are you doing this
with any quixotic notion of helping me--in _my_ business? Helping me to
take care of my family? Helping me to--" he stood up now, looking very
tall and rather forbidding, "No, I won't say that to you."

"Would there be anything wrong in my meaning exactly that?" she asked,
holding her own head a little higher; "both what you said and what you
didn't?"

"It would be absolutely wrong, all of it," he answered. "I cannot
believe that the woman I love would--could take such a position."

"Look here, Ross!" said the girl earnestly. "Suppose you knew where
there was a gold mine--_knew it_--and by going away for a few years you
could get a real fortune--wouldn't you do it?"

"Naturally I should," he agreed.

"Well, suppose it wasn't a gold mine, but a business, a new system like
those cigar stores--or--some patent amusement specialty--or
_anything_--that you knew was better than what you're doing--wouldn't
you have a right to try it?"

"Of course I should--but what has that to do with this case?"

"Why it's the same thing! Don't you see? I have plans that will be of
real benefit to all of us, something worth while to _do_--and not only
for us but for _everybody_--a real piece of progress--and I'm going to
leave my people--and even you!--for a little while--to make us all
happier later on."

He smiled lovingly at her but shook his head slowly. "You dear, brave,
foolish child!" he said. "I don't for one moment doubt your noble
purposes. But you don't get the man's point of view--naturally. What's
more you don't seem to get the woman's."

"Can you see no other point of view than those?" she asked.

"There are no others," he answered. "Come! come! my darling, don't add
this new difficulty to what we've got to carry! I know you have a hard
time of it at home. Some day, please God, you shall have an easier one!
And I'm having a hard time too--I don't deny it. But you are the
greatest joy and comfort I have, dear--you know that. If you go
away--it will be harder and slower and longer--that's all. I shall have
you to worry about too. Let somebody else do the gold-mine, dear--you
stay here and comfort your Mother as long as you can--and me. How can I
get along without you?"

He tried to put his arm around her again, but she drew back. "Dear,"
she said. "If I deliberately do what I think is right--against your
wishes--what will you do?"

"Do?" The laughed bitterly. "What can I do? I'm tied by the leg
here--l can't go after you. I've nothing to pull you out of a scrape
with if you get in one. I couldn't do anything but--stand it."

"And if I go ahead, and do what you don't like--and make
you--suffer--would you--would you rather be free?" Her voice was very
low and shaken, but he heard her well enough.

"Free of you? Free of _you_?" He caught her and held her and kissed
her over and over.

"You are mine!" he said. "You have given yourself to me! You cannot
leave me. Neither of us is free--ever again." But she struggled away
from him.

"Both of us are free--to do what we think right, _always_ Ross! I
wouldn't try to stop you if you thought it was your duty to go to the
North Pole!" She held him a little way off. "Let me tell you, dear.
Sit down--let me tell you all about it." But he wouldn't sit down.

"I don't think I want to know the details," he said. "It doesn't much
matter what you're going to do--if you really go away. I can't stop
you--I see that. If you think this thing is your 'duty' you'll do it if
it kills us all--and you too! If you have to go--I shall do
nothing--can do nothing--but wait till you come back to me! Whatever
happens, darling--no matter how you fail--don't ever be afraid to come
back to me."

He folded his arms now--did not attempt to hold her--gave her the
freedom she asked and promised her the love she had almost feared to
lose--and her whole carefully constructed plan seemed like a child's
sand castle for a moment; her heroic decision the wildest folly.

He was not even looking at her; she saw his strong, clean-cut profile
dark against the moonlit house, a settled patience in its lines. Duty!
Here was duty, surely, with tenderest happiness. She was leaning toward
him--her hand was seeking his, when she heard through the fragrant
silence a sound from her mother's room--the faint creak of her light
rocking chair. She could not sleep--she was sitting up with her
trouble, bearing it quietly as she had so many others.

The quiet everyday tragedy of that distasteful life--the slow withering
away of youth and hope and ambition into a gray waste of ineffectual
submissive labor--not only of her life, but of thousands upon thousands
like her--it all rose up like a flood in the girl's hot young heart.

Ross had turned to her--was holding out his arms to her. "You won't go,
my darling!" he said.

"I am going Wednesday on the 7.10," said Diantha.

THE "ANTI" AND THE FLY

The fly upon the Cartwheel
Thought he made all the Sound;
He thought he made the Cart go on--
And made the wheels go round.

The Fly upon the Cartwheel
Has won undying fame
For Conceit that was colossal,
And Ignorance the same.

But to-day he has a Rival
As we roll down History's Track--
For the "Anti" on the Cartwheel
Thinks she makes the Wheels go back!

THE BARREL

I was walking, peacefully enough, along a plain ordinary road, when I
lifted my head and observed an impressive gateway. The pillars were of
stone, high, carven, massive; mighty gates of wrought iron hung between
them, the gray wall stretched away on either side.

As the gates were open and there was no prohibitory sign, I entered, and
for easy miles walked on; under the springing arches of tall elms, flat
roofs of beech, and level fans of fir and pine; through woodland, park
and meadow, with glimpses of starred lily-ponds, blue lakelets, and
bright brooks; seeing the dappled deer, the swans and pheasants--a
glorious place indeed.

Then a smooth turn, and across velvet lawns and statued gardens I saw a
towering palace, so nobly beautiful, so majestic, I took off my hat
involuntarily. Approaching it I was met by courteous servingmen; told
that it was open to visitors; and shown from hall to hall, from floor to
floor; where every object was a work of art; where line, color and
proportion, perfect architecture and fitting decoration made an
overwhelming beauty.

"Whose it is?" I inquired. "Some Duke?--King?--Emperor? Who owns this
palace?--this glorious estate?"

They bowed and offered to lead me to him.

Downward and toward the back; through servants' apartments; through
workroom, scullery and stable; out to the last and least and meanest
little yard; narrow and dark, stone-paved, stone-walled, shadowed by
caves of barns; there, huddled in a barrel, they pointed out a man.

They bowed to him, they called him master. They told me he was the
owner of this vast estate.

I could not believe it--but they stood bowing--and he ordered them away.

"What!" I cried. "_You!_--you are the owner--the master of all this
wealth of beauty--this beauty of wealth! You own these miles of breezy
upland and rich valley--still forests and bright lakes! You own these
noble trees--those overflowing flowers--those glades of browsing deer!
You own this palace--a joy to the eye and uplift to the soul! This
majesty and splendor--this comfort, beauty, form, you own all this--and
are living--_here._"

He regarded me superciliously, with a weary expression.

"Young man," he said, "you are a dreamer--a visionary--a Utopian!--an
idealist! You should consider Facts, my young sir; fix your mind on
Facts! The _Fact_ is that I live in this Barrel."

It was a fact;--he did visibly live in the Barrel.

It was also a fact that he owned that vast estate.

And there was no lid on the Barrel.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

III.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY.

NOTE--The word "Androcentric" we owe to Prof. Lester F. Ward. In his
book, "Pure Sociology," Chap. 14, he describes the Androcentric Theory
of life, hitherto universally accepted; and introduces his own
"Gyneacocentric Theory." All who are interested in the deeper
scientific aspects of this question are urged to read that chapter.
Prof. Ward's theory is to my mind the most important that has been
offered the world since the Theory of Evolution; and without exception
the most important that has ever been put forward concerning women.

Among the many paradoxes which we find in human life is our low average
standard of health and beauty, compared with our power and knowledge.
All creatures suffer from conflict with the elements; from enemies
without and within--the prowling devourers of the forest, and "the
terror that walketh in darkness" and attacks the body from inside, in
hidden millions.

Among wild animals generally, there is a certain standard of excellence;
if you shoot a bear or a bird, it is a fair sample of the species; you
do not say, "O what an ugly one!" or "This must have been an invalid!"

Where we have domesticated any animal, and interfered with its natural
habits, illness has followed; the dog is said to have the most diseases
second to man; the horse comes next; but the wild ones put us to shame
by their superior health and the beauty that belongs to right
development.

In our long ages of blind infancy we assume that sickness was a
visitation frown the gods; some still believe this, holding it to be a
special prerogative of divinity to afflict us in this way. We speak of
"the ills that flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was entailed and
inalienable. Only of late years, after much study and long struggle
with this old belief which made us submit to sickness as a blow from the
hand of God, we are beginning to learn something of the many causes of
our many diseases, and how to remove some of them.

It is still true, however, that almost every one of us is to some degree
abnormal; the features asymmetrical, the vision defective, the digestion
unreliable, the nervous system erratic--we are but a job lot even in
what we call "good health"; and are subject to a burden of pain and
premature death that would make life hideous if it were not so
ridiculously unnecessary.

As to beauty--we do not think of expecting it save in the rarely
exceptional case. Look at the faces--the figures--in any crowd you
meet; compare the average man or the average woman with the normal type
of human beauty as given us in picture and statue; and consider if there
is not some general cause for so general a condition of ugliness.

Moreover, leaving our defective bodies concealed by garments; what are
those garments, as conducive to health and beauty? Is the practical
ugliness of our men's attire, and the impractical absurdity of our
women's, any contribution to human beauty? Look at our houses--are they
beautiful? Even the houses of the rich?

We do not even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowing
loveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest of
all. We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so used to
calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste," that only
children dare frankly yearn for Beauty--and they are speedily educated
out of it.

The reasons specially given for our low standards of health and beauty
are ignorance, poverty, and the evil effects of special trades. The Man
with the Hoe becomes brother to the ox because of over-much hoeing; the
housepainter is lead-poisoned because of his painting; books have been
written to show the injurious influence of nearly all our industries
upon workers.

These causes are sound as far as they go; but do not cover the whole
ground.

The farmer may be muscle-bound and stooping from his labor; but that
does not account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism.

Then we allege poverty as covering all. Poverty does cover a good deal.
But when we find even a half-fed savage better developed than a well
paid cashier; and a poor peasant woman a more vigorous mother than the
idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not enough.

Then we say ignorance explains it. But there are most learned
professors who are ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors who can
boast no beauty and but moderate health; there are some of the petted
children of the wealthy, upon whom every care is lavished from birth,
and who still are ill to look at and worse to marry.

All these special causes are admitted, given their due share in lowering
our standards, but there is another far more universal in its
application and its effects. Let us look back on our little ancestors
the beasts, and see what keeps them so true to type.

The type itself set by that balance of conditions and forces we call
"natural selection." As the environment changes they must be adapted to
it, if they cannot so adapt themselves they die. Those who live are, by
living, proven capable of maintaining themselves. Every creature which
has remained on earth, while so many less effective kinds died out,
remains as a conqueror. The speed of the deer--the constant use of
speed--is what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and beautiful. The
varied activities of the life of a leopard are what have developed the
sinuous gracile strength we so admire. It is what the creature does for
its living, its daily life-long exercise which makes it what it is.

But there is another great natural force which works steadily to keep
all animals up to the race standard; that is sexual selection.
Throughout nature the male is the variant, as we have already noted.
His energy finds vent not only in that profuse output of decorative
appendages Ward defines as "masculine efflorescence" but in variations
not decorative, not useful or desirable at all.

The female, on the other hand, varies much less, remaining nearer the
race type; and her function is to select among these varying males the
specimens most valuable to the race. In the intense masculine
competition the victor must necessarily be stronger than his fellows; he
is first proven equal to his environment by having lived to grow up,
then more than equal to his fellows by overcoming them. This higher
grade of selection also develops not only the characteristics necessary
to make a living; but secondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic
nature, which make much of what we call beauty. Between the two, all
who live must be up to a certain grade, and those who become parents
must be above it; a masterly arrangement surely!

Here is where, during the period of our human history, we in our newborn
consciousness and imperfect knowledge, have grieviously interfered with
the laws of nature. The ancient proprietary family, treating the woman
as a slave, keeping her a prisoner and subject to the will of her
master, cut her off at once from the exercise of those activities which
alone develop and maintain the race type.

Take the one simple quality of speed. We are a creature built for
speed, a free swift graceful animal; and among savages this is still
seen--the capacity for running, mile after mile, hour after hour.
Running is as natural a gait for _genus homo_ as for _genus cervus._
Now suppose among deer, the doe was prohibited from running; the stag
continuing free on the mountain; the doe living in caves and pens,
unequal to any exercise. The effect on the species would be,
inevitably, to reduce its speed.

In this way, by keeping women to one small range of duties, and in most
cases housebound, we have interfered with natural selection and its
resultant health and beauty. It can easily be seen what the effect on
the race would have been if all men had been veiled and swathed, hidden
in harems, kept to the tent or house, and confined to the activities of
a house-servant. Our stalwart laborers, our proud soldiers, our
athletes, would never have appeared under such circumstances. The
confinement to the house alone, cutting women off from sunshine and air,
is by itself an injury; and the range of occupation allowed them is not
such as to develop a high standard of either health or beauty. Thus we
have cut off half the race from the strengthening influence of natural
selection, and so lowered our race-standards in large degree.

This alone, however, would not have hid such mischievous effects but for
our further blunder in completely reversing nature's order of sexual
selection. It is quite possible that even under confinement and
restriction women could have kept up the race level, passably, through
this great function of selection; but here is the great fundamental
error of the Androcentric Culture. Assuming to be the possessor of
women, their owner and master, able at will to give, buy and sell, or do
with as he pleases, man became the selector.

It seems a simple change; and in those early days, wholly ignorant of
natural laws, there was no suspicion that any mischief would result. In
the light of modern knowledge, however, the case is clear. The woman
was deprived of the beneficent action of natural selection, and the man
was then, by his own act, freed from the stern but elevating effect of
sexual selection. Nothing was required of the woman by natural
selection save such capacity as should please her master; nothing was
required of the man by sexual selection save power to take by force, or
buy, a woman.

It does not take a very high standard of feminine intelligence,
strength, skill, health, or beauty to be a houseservant, or even a
housekeeper; witness the average.

It does not take a very high standard of masculine, intelligence,
strength, skill, health or beauty to maintain a woman in that
capacity--witness average.

Here at the very root of our physiological process, at the beginning of
life, we have perverted the order of nature, and are suffering the
consequences.

It has been held by some that man as the selector has developed beauty,
more beauty than we had before; and we point to the charms of our women
as compared with those of the squaw. The answer to this is that the
squaw belongs to a decadent race; that she too is subject to the man,
that the comparison to have weight should be made between our women and
the women of the matriarchate--an obvious impossibility. We have not on
earth women in a state of normal freedom and full development; but we
have enough difference in their placing to learn that human strength and
beauty grows with woman's freedom and activity.

The second answer is that much of what man calls beauty in woman is not
human beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of certain points which
appeal to him as a male. The excessive fatness, previously referred to,
is a case in point; that being considered beauty in a woman which is in
reality an element of weakness, inefficiency and ill-health. The
relatively small size of women, deliberately preferred, steadfastly
chosen, and so built into the race, is a blow at real human progress in
every particular. In our upward journey we should and do grow larger,
leaving far behind us our dwarfish progenitors. Yet the male, in his
unnatural position as selector, preferring for reasons both practical
and sentimental, to have "his woman" smaller than himself, has
deliberately striven to lower the standard of size in the race. We used
to read in the novels of the last generation, "He was a magnificent
specimen of manhood"--"Her golden head reached scarcely to his
shoulder"--"She was a fairy creature--the tiniest of her sex." Thus we
have mated, and yet expected that by some hocus pocus the boys would all
"take after their father," and the girls, their mother. In his efforts
to improve the breed of other animals, man has never tried to
deliberately cross the large and small and expect to keep up the
standard of size.

As a male he is appealed to by the ultra-feminine, and has given small
thought to effects on the race. He was not designed to do the
selecting. Under his fostering care we have bred a race of women who
are physically weak enough to be handed about like invalids; or mentally
weak enough to pretend they are--and to like it. We have made women who
respond so perfectly to the force which made them, that they attach all
their idea of beauty to those characteristics which attract men;
sometimes humanly ugly without even knowing it.

For instance, our long restriction to house-limits, the heavy
limitations of our clothing, and the heavier ones of traditional
decorum, have made women disproportionately short-legged. This is a
particularly undignified and injurious characteristic, bred in women and
inherited by men, most seen among those races which keep their women
most closely. Yet when one woman escapes the tendency and appears with
a normal length of femur and tibia, a normal height of hip and shoulder,
she is criticized and called awkward by her squatty sisters!

The most convenient proof of the inferiority of women in human beauty is
shown by those composite statues prepared by Mr. Sargent for the World's
Fair of '93. These were made from gymnasium measurements of thousands
of young collegians of both sexes all over America. The statue of the
girl has a pretty face, small hands and feet, rather nice arms, though
weak; but the legs are too thick and short; the chest and shoulders
poor; and the trunk is quite pitiful in its weakness. The figure of the
man is much better proportioned.

Thus the effect on human beauty of masculine selection.

Beyond this positive deteriorative effect on women through man's
arbitrary choice comes the negative effect of woman's lack of choice.
Bought or stolen or given by her father, she was deprived of the
innately feminine right and duty of choosing. "Who giveth this woman?"
we still inquire in our archaic marriage service, and one man steps
forward and gives her to another man.

Free, the female chose the victor, and the vanquished went unmated--and
without progeny. Dependent, having to be fed and cared for by some man,
the victors take their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take what is
left; and the poor women, "marrying for a home," take anything. As a
consequence the inferior male is as free to transmit his inferiority as
the superior to give better qualities, and does so--beyond computation.
In modern days, women are freer, in some countries freer than in others;
here in modern America freest of all; and the result is seen in our
improving standards of health and beauty.

Still there remains the field of inter-masculine competition, does there
not? Do not the males still struggle together? Is not that as of old,
a source of race advantage?

To some degree it is. When life was simple and our activities consisted
mainly in fighting and hard work; the male who could vanquish the others
was bigger and stronger. But inter-masculine competition ceases to be
of such advantage when we enter the field of social service. What is
required in organized society is the specialization of the individual,
the development of special talents, not always of immediate benefit to
the man himself, but of ultimate benefit to society. The best social
servant, progressive, meeting future needs, is almost always at a
disadvantage besides the well-established lower types. We need, for
social service, qualities quite different from the simple masculine
characteristics--desire, combat, self-expression.

By keeping what we call "the outside world" so wholly male, we keep up
masculine standards at the expense of human ones. This may be broadly
seen in the slow and painful development of industry and science as
compared to the easy dominance of warfare throughout all history until
our own times.

The effect of all this ultra masculine competition upon health and
beauty is but too plainly to be seen. Among men the male idea of what
is good looking is accentuated beyond reason. Read about any "hero" you
please; or study the products of the illustrator and note the broad
shoulders, the rugged features, the strong, square, determined jaw.
That jaw is in evidence if everything else fails. He may be cross-eyed,
wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged--what you please; but he must
have a more or less prognathous jaw.

Meanwhile any anthropologist will show you that the line of human
development is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator,
and toward the measured dignity of the Greek type. The possessor of
that kind of jaw may enable male to conquer male, but does not make him
of any more service to society; of any better health or higher beauty.

Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influence
here of masculine dominance.

We have before spoken of the peculiar position of our race in that the
woman is the only female creature who carries the burden of sex
ornament. This amazing reversal of the order of nature results at its
mildest in a perversion of the natural feminine instincts of love and
service, and an appearance of the masculine instincts of self-expression
and display. Alone among all female things do women decorate and preen
themselves and exhibit their borrowed plumage (literally!) to attract
the favor of the male. This ignominy is forced upon them by their
position of economic dependence; and their general helplessness. As all
broader life is made to depend, for them, on whom they marry, indeed as
even the necessities of life so often depend on their marrying someone,
they have been driven into this form of competition, so alien to the
true female attitude.

The result is enough to make angels weep--and laugh. Perhaps no step in
the evolution of beauty went farther than our human power of making a
continuous fabric; soft and mobile, showing any color and texture
desired. The beauty of the human body is supreme, and when we add to it
the flow of color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes of a soft,
light garment over free limbs--it is a new field of loveliness and
delight. Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a new
pleasure. Our garments, first under right natural selection developing
perfect use, under right sex selection developing beauty; and further,
as our human aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble symbolism,
would have been an added strength and glory, a ceaseless joy.

What is the case?

Men, under a too strictly inter-masculine environment, have evolved the
mainly useful but beautiless costume common to-day; and women--?

Women wear beautiful garments when they happen to be the fashion; and
ugly garments when they are the fashion, and show no signs of knowing
the difference. They show no added pride in the beautiful, no hint of
mortification in the hideous, and are not even sensitive under
criticism, or open to any persuasion or argument. Why should they be?

Their condition, physical and mental, is largely abnormal, their whole
passionate absorption in dress and decoration is abnormal, and they have
never looked, from a frankly human standpoint, at their position and its
peculiarities, until the present age.

In the effect of our wrong relation on the world's health, we have
spoken of the check to vigor and growth due to the housebound state of
women and their burdensome clothes. There follow other influences,
similar in origin, even more evil in result. To roughly and briefly
classify we may distinguish the diseases due to bad air, to bad food,
and that field of cruel mischief we are only now beginning to
discuss--the diseases directly due to the erroneous relation between men
and women.

We are the only race where the female depends on the male for a
livelihood. We are the only race that practices prostitution. From the
first harmless-looking but abnormal general relation follows the well
recognized evil of the second, so long called "a social necessity," and
from it, in deadly sequence, comes the "wages of sin;" death not only of
the guilty, but of the innocent. It is no light part of our criticism
of the Androcentric Culture that a society based on masculine desires
alone, has willingly sacrificed such an army of women; and has repaid
the sacrifice by the heaviest punishments.

That the unfortunate woman should sicken and die was held to be her just
punishment; that man too should bear part penalty was found unavoidable,
though much legislation and medical effort has been spent to shield him;
but to the further consequences society is but now waking up.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

Mr. H. G. Wells is an author whose work I have followed with delight,
interest and respect for years--since first I read that sinister vision
of dead worlds, "The Time Machine." He is a successful craftsman, an
artist of power; and has that requisite so often missing in our literary
craftsmen and artists--something to say. In his mighty work of
electrifying the world's slow mind to the splendid possibilities of life
as it might be, may be, will be, as soon as we wake up, he has my
admiring sympathy.

But alas! and alas! Like many another great man, Mr. Wells loses his
perspective and clear vision when he considers women. He sees women as
females--and does not see that they are human; the universal mistake of
the world behind us; but one unworthy of a mind that sees the world
before us so vividly.

He has knowledge, the scientific habit of mind, an enormous imagination
and the courage to use it; he is not, usually, afraid of facts, even
when an admission carries reproach. But in this field he shows simply
the old race-mind, that attitude which considers women as mothers,
potential, active, and in retrospect; and as nothing else. He likes
them as mothers. He honors them as mothers. He wants to have them
salaried, as mothers. But he thinks it quite beyond reason that they
should appear as regular members of the working world; their motherhood,
to his mind, would prevent it.

In this attitude he has produced a vivid novel called Ann Veronica; a
book of keen analysis and delicate observation, full of amusing darts
and flashes; seeing and showing much that is absurd in our modern
uneasiness and wavering discussion; and thus explained by himself in The
Spectator (which had denounced the work as "poisonous").

"My book was written primarily to express the resentment and distress
which many women feel nowadays at their unavoidable practical dependence
upon some individual man not of their deliberate choice"; and he further
says he sympathizes with the woman who lives with a man she does not
love; and respects her natural desire to prefer some one man as her
husband and father of her children--a harmless position surely.

To carry out these feelings he has described a girl, vigorous and
handsome, a nice, normal girl, who is crushed and stultified in her home
life and wants to get out of it; as is the case with so many girls
today. She wants freedom--room to grow--more knowledge and power--again
as is so common nowadays. We read with sympathy, admiring his keen sure
touch, hoping much for this brave woman in her dash for freedom.

Then he makes this girl, so strong and intelligent, deliberately refuse
various kinds of work she might have done because they did not please
her; and borrow money from a man in preference to earning her living.
She exposes herself to insult and even danger with an idiocy that even a
novel-reared child of sixteen would have scorned. She falls in love,
healthfully enough, with a fine strong man; and sees no reason for
avoiding him when she learns he is married. She cheerfully elopes with
him--quite forgetting the money she had borrowed, and when she remembers
about that abhorrent debt, expects her companion to pay it, without a
qualm apparently.

The ex-wife must have conveniently died after a while; and the man
develops a sudden new talent as a playwright; for they wind up very
respectably in a nice flat, having Ann Veronica's father and aunt to
dinner, and regarding them as a pair of walking mummies. Nothing more
is said of any desire on the part of the heroine for freedom, knowledge,
independence; having attained her man she has attained all; indeed Mr.
Wells goes to the pains to fully express his idea of the case, by
describing her early struggle and outburst as like "the nuptial flight
of an ant."

It is hard to see why Mr. Wells, in seeking "to express the resentment
and distress which many women feel nowadays" at their dependence; and in
showing sympathy with their natural right of choice, should have
burdened himself with all this unnecessary complication of special
foolishness on the part of his heroine which alienates our sympathy; and
special illegality on the man's position. Perhaps this is to add
heroism to her effort to secure the right mate, to indicate how small
are any other considerations in comparison to this primary demand of
life.

Waiving all objections to this framework of the story, there remains the
painful exhibition of Mr. Wells's misapprehension of the larger causes
of the present unrest among women. What later historians will point out
as the most distinguishing feature of our time, its importance shared
only by the movement towards economic democracy, is the sudden and
irresistible outburst of human powers, human feeling, human activities,
and in that half the world hitherto denied such experiences.

Ann Veronica, as at first portrayed, shared in this world impulse. She
wanted to be human, and tried to be. Her masculine interpreter, seeing
no possible interests in the woman's life except those of sex, dismisses
all that passionate outgoing as comparable to the mating impulse of
insects. He overestimates the weight of this department of life, a
mistake common to most men and some women.

When opposed, the protagonists of this position cry that their opponent
wishes to unsex women; to repudiate motherhood; and see in all the
natural development of the modern woman only a threat of decreased
population.

Cannot Mr. Wells, as one acquainted with zoology, see that both male and
female of a species are alike in the special qualities of that species,
although differing in sex? Can he not see that the area of human life,
the social development of humanity, is one quite common to both men and
women; and that a woman, however amply occupied in wife and mother-hood,
suffers from lack of human relation, if denied it, even as a man would,
whose activities were absolutely limited to husband- and father-hood?

*

If you are a believer in women's voting why don't you take the best
equal suffrage paper in the country? Not the Forerunner--which is only
a suffrage paper because of its interest in women, and only a woman's
paper because of its interest in humanity, but this one:

Vol. XL.
The Woman's Journal

FOUNDED BY
LUCY STONE AND HENRY B. BLACKWELL

A weekly newspaper published every Saturday in Boston, devoted to the
interests of women--to their educational, industrial, legal and
political equality, and especially to their right of suffrage

Entered at the Post Office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter

EDITOR:
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL

ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
FLORENCE M. ADKINSON, CATHARINE WILDE

OFFICE: NO. 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
ROOM 1018

The love and faith, the hope and courage, the steady unflinching
devotion of forty years of solid work, and the quality of brain power,
which have fed this lamp of liberty, make a Iight that is worth
following.

Two noble lives have been given to it, and the daughter of one of those
two is carrying it on superbly. It is a paper that will broaden, live
and grow, and carry on its larger work long after this one political
question is rightly settled.

It carries news--the kind of news progressive women want. It is broad
and bright, and interesting; full of short and memorable bits that prick
the mind to understanding.

I have read this paper, myself, many years, and know its merits well.

Try it.

*

The Sea of Matrimony. By Jessie H. Childs. Broadway Pub. Co., New York
and Baltimore.

Here is quite another kind of a novel. Earnest, thoughtful, sincere,
lacking in humor and in technical finish, yet holding one's attention by
the complete preoccupation of the author in her theme, and by the common
interests of the discussion.

It reminds one vaguely of "Together," giving pair after pair of
ill-mated persons, but one happy marriage in the lot, and that a
childless one, and offering no solution to the problem raised save in
that searching philosophy we seek to cover by the term New Thought.

There is much keen observation in this book; and so intimate an analysis
of character that one wonders who this person and that may be; and the
courage shown in giving spades their names is worthy of respect

The author shows a power of keen appreciation of the daily problems of
life. The description of the woman who tried to change even her
husband's cigars to the brand her father used to smoke is particularly
good.

Many men and women may see their troubles reflected in this study of the
intricate difficulties of married life; and some will find strength and
hope in its conclusions.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

Here is a question of financial ethics sent by one of our readers: "A
woman is sent out on a trip of inspection for her State School, or for
her Club. She is told to keep accurate accounts of her expenditures,
and is expected to send in an itemized account. Shall she send in the
regular two or three dollars a day account? Or shall she itemize each
street carfare and meal? Shall she not be justified in using a dollar
to-day which she did not spend on yesterday's dinner, in livening up her
mind by a visit to the theatre? Or shall she eat, whether hungry or
not, and pay all her own minor expenses?"

This is a good long question, and seems open to some discussion. The
simplest answer seems to be, "If the woman is required to send in an
itemized account, she should do so, accurately. If her expenses are
within the usual amount allowed it should make no difference to the
employer whether the money is spent on a dinner or a theatre.

She visibly could not suppress the theatre expense and yet have an
accurate account; nor could she call it a dinner--and be truthful.

If it is simply a matter of having such and such an allowance for
expenses, then it is no one's business how she spends it; but if she has
agreed to itemize she ought to do so.

PLAY-TIME

THE MELANCHOLY RABBIT

(A Pantoum.)

A melancholy rabbit in distress,
Was heard complaining on the moonlit mead,
And neither we, nor anyone, could guess
If he were ill at ease, or ill indeed

We heard complaining on the moonlit mead,
We sought the lonely wanderer to relieve;
If he were ill at ease or ill indeed
We did not ask--sufficient he should grieve.

We sought the lonely wanderer to relieve
With sundry bundles of electric hay;
We did not ask--sufficient he should grieve--
If he were used to dieting that way.

With sundry bundles of electric hay
The suffering hare was speedily supplied;
If he were used to dieting that way
It could not be the reason that he died.

The suffering hare was speedily supplied--
A melancholy rabbit in distress;
It could not be the reason that he died--
And neither we, nor anyone, could guess.

[Advertisement]

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon;
dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

_What is it For?_ It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage
and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
make.

_What is it about?_ It is about people, principles, and the questions
of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives
a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

_Is it a Woman's magazine?_ It will treat all three phases of our
existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true
place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important
citizen.

_Is it a Socialist Magazine?_ It is a magazine for humanity, and
humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is
part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious
humanity is to promote Socialization.

_Why is it published?_ It is published to express ideas which need a
special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons
interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser."
The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this
authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will
be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual
experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description
command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be
useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own
statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be
true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette,
fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be
answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
_____ 19___ to _____ 19___

__________

__________

__________

[Advertisement]

Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising

This magazine was planned to carry twenty-four pages of reading matter
and eight of advertising matter.

A careful list was made of about twenty first class articles, personally
known and used by the editor; and the offer was made to write absolutely
true descriptions and recommendations of them.

The value of this form of advertisement was not in the extent of the
circulation, but in

a. The unique and attractive method.

b. The select class of goods.

c. The select class of readers.

d. The weight of a personal authority specially known to these select
readers.

Our readers as far as heard from have almost without exception spoken
highly of our advertisements and declared they would purchase the goods.

If, however, the amount of sales secured does not equal the price of the
advertisement, there is no reason whatever why any dealer should use our
pages.

*

There is a tooth-paste, specially recommended by physicians, well used
and found of marked value, noticeably checking decay of the teeth and
improving mouth and throat conditions.

Now, suppose the makers take one page in one issue of The Forerunner at
$25.00. Then suppose that only one thousand of our readers spend 25
cents each to try that tooth-paste. That makes $250.00; and the makers
ought to get at least half of it.

if only two hundred did it, the makers would still get their money
back--to say nothing of the additional advertising given by each new
purchaser who likes it.

*

Here is an experiment The Forerunner would like to try.

If all the readers who did purchase goods on the strength of these
recommendations would waste a cent in sending me a post card saying they
had done so, it would definitely show whether this small experiment in
honesty has any practical value.

Meanwhile The Forerunner will continue to run one or two as samples; put
in real ones when it gets them; and may find it necessary to take out
the eight pages which would have been so useful if properly filled.

Best of all; if enough subscriptions come in, we can get along without
any advertising whatever--and furnish more reading matter.

For this ideal state we look forward hopefully.

[Advertisement]

Things we wish to Advertise

This is the list of articles the editor wishes to secure, having known
and used them for from two to forty years; some were used by her mother
before her. They are things you can buy anywhere or order by mail.

A TOILET PREPARATION: Used by mother and self.
A COURTPLASTER: Used from infancy, perfect.
SOMETHING SIMILAR TO ABOVE, Most excellent.
A SILVER CLEANER: Very satisfactory.
SEVEN KINDS OF SOAP--and such like--all good.
A BREAKFAST FOOD: Used unvaryingly for nine years.
SIX OTHER BREAKFAST FOODS: All first-rate.
ONE VARIETY OF SOUPS: Absolutely good.
FOUR OTHER FOOD-MAKERS: Safe to recommend.
FOUR KINDS OF COCOA: All very good.
A HAIRBRUSH: A real delight--if you have hair.
MY TYPEWRITER: I _would_ have this kind.
A PEN: All my books were written with this pen.
A VOICE TABLOID: A blessing to a speaker.
A TOOTHPASTE: The best out of many.
PERFECTION IN HAIRPINS.
TWO KINDS OF UNDERWEAR: Good ones.
TWO KINDS OF HOSIERY: They wear well.
A HOUSEHOLD COMFORT AND TIME-SAVER.
A MATTRESS: Continuously satisfactory.
BOOKCASES: The kind you want.
A MUSIC MACHINE: Or how to keep the boys at home.
FIVE FOOD ARTICLES: Long valued.
A DRESS SHIELD: That can be trusted.
SOMETHING BETTER THAN WHALEBONE.
TWO KINDS OF SKIRT-BINDING: Always reliable.
THE BEST OF CRACKERS.
FOUNTAIN PEN THAT NEVER LEAKS.

These are "preferred stock." More may be tried and found worthy; but
these have been used long and continuously--just because they were good.

If this list could be filled out at reasonable rates, it would form a
very useful little collection, to seller and buyer. And to

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

[Advertisement]

C A L E N D U L A

CHILDREN CEASE TO CRY FOR IT.

This is a gratuitous advertisement, benefitting

a) The Child; whose pain stops;

b) The Mother; who doesn't have to hear him cry;

c) The Nearest Druggist--a little.

CALENDULA is a good standard old drug--made of marigolds--in the
_materia medica._ You buy a little bottle of tincture of calendula, and
keep it on the shelf. Nobody will drink it by mistake--it doesn't taste
good.

Presently Johnny falls down hard--he was running--he fell on a gritty
place--his poor little knee is scraped raw. And he howls, how he howls!
square-mouthed and inconsolable.

Then you hastily get a half a tea-cupful of water, a little warm if you
have it, and put in a few drops of calendula. Wet a soft clean rag in
it, bind it softly on the wound, keep it wet--and the pain stops.

Many many times has this quieted my infant anguish; also have I used it
as a grown up. The effect is the same.

C A L E N D U L A
TAKES THE PAIN FROM
A R A W W O U N D

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 4
FEBRUARY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

There is one large obstacle to woman suffrage which has nothing to do
with sex.
Men, the governing class, hesitate in extending equal political
responsibility and power to their domestic servants. Do you wonder?

TWO PRAYERS

Only for these I pray,
Pray with assurance strong:
Light to discover the way,
Power to follow it long.

Let me have light to see,
Light to be sure and know,
When the road is clear to me
Willingly I go.

Let me have Power to do,
Power of the brain and nerve,
Though the task is heavy and new
Willingly I will serve.

My prayers are lesser than three,
Nothing I pray but two;
Let me have light to see,
Let me have power to do.

AN OFFENDER

"Where's Harry?" was Mr. Gortlandt's first question.

"He's gone to the country, to mother. It was so hot this last day or
two, I've sent him out, with Miss Colton. I'm going Saturday. Sit
down."

"I miss him," said her visitor, "more than I thought I could. I've
learned more in these seven years than I thought there was to know. Or
in the last two perhaps, since I've found you again."

She looked at him with a little still smile, but there was a puzzled
expression behind it, as of one whose mind was not made up.

They sat in the wide window of a top floor apartment, awning-shaded. A
fresh breeze blew in upon them, and the city dust blew in upon them
also, lying sandy on the broad sill.

She made little wavy lines in it with one finger--

"These windows ought to be shut tight, I suppose, and the blinds, and
the curtains. Then we should be cleaner."

"As to furniture," he agreed, "but not as to our lungs."

"I don't know about that," she said; "we get plenty of air--but see
what's in it."

"A city is a dirty place at the best; but Mary--I didn't come to
consider the ethics of the dust--how much longer must I wait?" he asked,
after a little pause. "Isn't two years courting, re-courting--enough?
Haven't I learned my lesson yet?"

"Some of it, I think," she admitted, "but not all."

"What more do you ask?" he pursued earnestly. "Can't we come to a
definite understanding? You'll be chasing off again in a few days; it's
blessed luck that brought you to town just now, and that I happened to
be here too."

"I don't how about the luck," said she. "It was business that brought
me. I never was in town before when it was so hot."

"Why don't you go to a hotel? This apartment is right under the roof,
gets the sun all day."

"It gets the breeze too, and sunlight is good. No, I'm better off in
the apartment, with Harry. It was very convenient of the Grants to be
away, and let me have it."

"How does Hal stand the weather?"

"Pretty well. But he was getting rather fretful, so I sent him off two
hours ago. I do hope he won't run away from Miss Colton again. She's
as nervous as I am about him."

"Don't you think he is fond of me?" asked the man. "I've got to catch
up, you see. He can't help being mine--half mine," he hastily added,
seeing a hint of denial in her look.

"Why yes, he seems fond of you, he is fond of you," she conceded. "I
hope he always will be, and I believe you are beginning to love him."

"A pretty strong beginning, Mary," said the man. "Of course I don't
pretend to have cared much at first, but now!--why he's so handsome, and
quick, and such a good little duffer; and so affectionate! When he
gives a jump and gets his arms around my neck and his legs around my
waist and 'hugs me all over' as he calls it, I almost feel as if I was a
mother! I can't say more than that, can I?"

"No, you certainly can't say more than that. I believe you, I'm not
questioning," for he looked up sharply at her tone.

"I've never had much to do with children, you see," he went on slowly,
"no little brothers or sisters, and then only-- What astonishes me is
how good they feel in your arms! The little fellow's body is so firm
and sinewy--he wriggles like a fish--a big fish that you're trying to
hold with both hands."

The mother smiled tenderly. She knew the feel of the little body so
well! From the soft pink helplessness, the little head falling so
naturally into the hollow of the arm or neck, the fumbling little hands;
then the gradual gain in size and strength, till now she held that eager
bounding little body, almost strong enough to get away from her--but not
wanting to. He still loved to nestle up to "Muzz," and was but newly
and partially won by this unaccustomed father.

"It's seven years Mary! That makes a man all over, they say. I'm sure
it has made me over. I'm an older man--and I think, wiser. I've
repented, I've outgrown my folly and seen the justice of my punishment.
I don't blame you an atom for divorcing me--I think you did right, and I
respect you for it. The biggest lesson I've learned is to love you! I
can see--now--that I didn't before.

Her face hardened as she looked at him. "No, you didn't, Harry, you
certainly didn't, nor the child-- When I think of what I was when you
married me! Of my proud health!--"

"_You_ are not hurt!" he cried. "I don't mean that you haven't been
hurt, I could kill myself when I think of how I made you suffer! But
you are a finer woman now than you were then; sweeter, stronger, wiser,
and more beautiful. When I found you again in Liverpool two years ago
it was a revelation. Now see--I don't even ask you to forgive me! I
ask you to try me again and let me prove I can make it up to you and the
boy!"

"It's not easy for me to forgive," she answered slowly-- "I'm not of the
forgiving nature. But there is a good deal of reason in your position.
You were my husband, you are Hal's father, there's no escaping that."

"Perhaps, if you will let the rest of my life make up for that time of
my Godforsaken meanness, you won't want to escape it, Mary! See--I have
followed you about for two years. I accepted your terms, you did not
promise me anything, but for the child's sake I might try once more, try
only as one of many, to see if I could win you--again. And I love you
now a hundred times better than I did when I married you!"

She fanned herself slowly with a large soft fan, and looked out across
the flickering roofs. Below them lay the highly respectable street on
which the house technically fronted, and the broad, crowded, roaring
avenue which it really overlooked.

The rattle of many drays and more delivery wagons rose up to them. An
unusual jangle drowned his words just then and she smilingly interpreted
"that's railroad iron--or girders, I can tell lots of them now. About
four A. M. there is a string of huge milk wagons. But the worst is the
cars. Hear that now--that's a flat wheel. How do you like it?"

"Mary--why do you bring up these cars again when I'm trying my best to
show you my whole heart? Don't put things like that between us!"

"But they are between us, Henry, all the time. I hear you tell me you
love me, and I don't doubt you do in a way; yes, as well as you can,
very much indeed!--I know. But when it comes to this car question; when
I talk to you of these juggernauts of yours; you are no more willing to
do the right thing than you were when I first knew you."

Mr. Cortlandt's face hardened. He drew himself up from the eager
position in which he had leaned forward, and evidently hesitated for a
moment as to his words.

In spite of his love for this woman, who, as he justly said, was far
more beautiful and winsome than the strong, angular, over-conscientious
girl he had married, neglected and shamed, his feelings as a business
man were strong within him.

"My dear--I am not personally responsible for the condition of these
cars."

"You are President of the Company. You hold controlling shares of the
stock. It was your vote that turned down the last improvement
proposition."

He looked at her sharply.

"I'm afraid someone has been prejudicing you against me Mary. You have
more technical information than seems likely to have reached you by
accident."

"It's not prejudice, but it is information; and Mr. Graham did tell me,
if that's what you mean. But he cares. You know how hard the
Settlement has worked to get the Company to make the streets safer for
children--and you wouldn't do a thing."

Mr. Cortlandt hesitated. It would never do to pile business details on
his suit for a love once lost and not yet regained.

"You make it hard for me Mary," he said. "Hard because it is difficult
to explain large business questions to a--to anyone not accustomed to
them. I cannot swing the affairs of a great corporation for personal
ends, even to please you."

"That is not the point," she said quickly.

He flushed, and hastily substituted "Even to suit the noblest
humanitarian feelings."

"Why not?" said she.

"Because that is not what street cars are run for," he pursued
patiently. "But why must we talk of this? It seems to put you so far
away. And you have given me no answer."

"I am sorry, but I am not ready yet."

"Is it Hugh Graham?" he demanded. The hot color leaped to her face, but
she met his eyes steadily. "I am much interested in Mr. Graham," she
said, "and in the noble work he is doing. I think I should really be
happier with him than with you. We care for the same things, he calls
out the best in me. But I have made no decision in his favor yet, nor
in yours. Both of you have a certain appeal to my heart, both to my
duty. With you the personal need, with him the hope of greater service.
But--you are the father of the child, and that gives you a great claim.
I have not decided."

The man looked relieved, and again drew his chair a little closer. The
sharp clangor of the cars rose between the,.

"You think I dragged in this car question," she said. "Really, I did it
because it is that sort of thing which does most to keep us apart,
and--I would like to remove it."

He leaned forward, playing with her big fan. "Let's remove it by all
means!" he said.

She looked at his bent head, the dark hair growing somewhat thin on top,
almost tenderly.

"If I could feel that you were truly on the right side, that you
considered your work as social service, that you tried to run your cars
to carry people--not to kill them!--If you could change your ground here
I think--almost--" she stopped, smiling up at him, her fan in her lap,
her firm delicate white hands eagerly clasped; then went on,

"Don't you care at all for the lives lost every day in this great
city--under your cars?"

"It cannot be helped, my dear. Our men are as careful as men can be.
But these swarming children will play in the streets--"

"Where else can they play!" she interjected.

"And they get right in front of the cars. We are very sorry; we pay out
thousands of dollars in damages: but it cannot be helped!"

She leaned back in her chair and her face grew cold.

"You speak as if you never heard of such things as fenders," she said.

"We have fenders!--almost every car--"

"Fenders! Do you call that piece of rat-trap a fender! Henry
Cortlandt! We were in Liverpool when this subject first came up between
us! They have fenders there that _fend_ and no murder list!"

"Conditions are different there," said he with an enforced quiet. "Our
pavement is different."

"Our children are not so different, are they?" she demanded. "Our
mothers are made of the same stuff I suppose?"

"You speak at if I wanted to kill them! As if I liked to!"

"I thought at first it would hurt you as it did me," she said warmly.
"I turned to you with real hope when we met in Liverpool. I was glad to
think I knew you, and I had not been glad of that for long! I thought
you would care, would do things."

Do what he would, his mouth set hard in its accustomed lines. "Those
English fender are not practicable in this country, Mary. They have
been tried."

"When? Where? By whom?" she threw at him. "I have read about it, and
heard about it. I know there was an effort to get them adopted, and
that they were refused. They cost more than this kind!" and she pointed
disdainfully at the rattling bit of stub-toed slat-work in front of a
passing car.

"Do you expect me to make a revolution in the street car system of
America--to please you? Do you make it a condition? Perhaps I can
accomplish it. Is it a bargain? Come--"

"No," she said slowly. "I'm not making bargains. I'm only wishing, as
I have wished so often in years past--that you were a different kind of
man--"

"What kind do you want me to be?"

"I want you to be--I wish you were--a man who cared to give perfect
service to his country, in his business."

"Perhaps I can be yet. I can try. If I had you to help me, with your
pure ideals, and the boy to keep my heart open for the children. I
don't know much about these things, but I can learn. I can read, you
can tell me what to read. We could study together. And in my position
perhaps, I could really be of some service after all."

"Perhaps?" She watched him, the strong rather heavy face, the
attractive smile, the eyes that interested and compelled. He was an
able, masterful man. He surely loved her now. She could feel a power
over him that her short miserable marriage had never given her; and her
girlhood's attraction toward him reasserted itself.

A new noise rose about them, a dissonant mingled merry outcry, made into
a level roaring sound by their height above the street.

"That's when the school up here lets out," she said. "We hear it every
day. Just see the crowds of them!"

They leaned on the broad sill and watched the many-colored torrent of
juveniles pouring past.

"One day it was different," she said. "A strange jarring shrillness in
it, a peculiar sound. I looked out, and there was a fight going on; two
boys tumbling about from one side of the street to the other, with a
moving ring around them, a big crowd, all roaring in one key."

"You get a birdseye view of life in these streets, don't you. Can you
make out that little chap with the red hair down there?"

"No--we are both near-sighted, you know. I can't distinguish faces at
this distance. Can you?"

"Not very clearly," he said. "But what a swarm they are!"

"Come away," said she, "I can't bear to look at them. So many children
in that stony street, and those cars going up and down like roaring
lions!"

They drew back into the big sunny room, and she seated herself at the
piano and turned over loose sheets of music.

He watched her with a look of intensest admiration, she was so tall, so
nobly formed, her soft rich gown flowed and followed as she walked, her
white throat rose round and royal from broad smooth shoulders.

He was beside her; he took away the music, laid it out of reach,
possessed himself of her hands.

"Give them back to me, Mary," he pleaded. "Come to me and help me to be
a better man! Help me to be a good father. I need you!"

She looked at him almost pleadingly. His eyes, his voice, his
hands,--they had their old-time charm for her. Yet he had only said
"Perhaps"--and he _might_ study, _might_ learn.

He asked her to help him, but he did not say "I will do this"--only "I
may."

In the steady bright June sunshine, in the sifting dust of a city
corner, in the dissonant, confused noise of the traffic below, they
stood and looked at one another.

His eyes brightened and deepened as he watched her changing color.
Softly he drew her towards him. "Even if you do not love me now, you
shall in time, you shall, my darling!"

But she drew back from him with a frightened start, a look of terror.

"What has happened!" she cried. "It's so still!"

They both rushed to the window. The avenue immediately below them was
as empty as midnight, and as silent. A great stillness widened and
spread for the moment around one vacant motionless open car. Without
passenger, driver, or conductor, it stood alone in the glaring space;
and then, with a gasp of horror, they both saw.

Right under their eyes, headed towards them, under the middle of the
long car--a little child.

He was quite still, lying face downward, dirty and tumbled, with
helpless arms thrown wide, the great car holding him down like a mouse
in a trap.

Then people came rushing.

She turned away, choking, her hands to her eyes.

"Oh!" she cried, "Oh! It's a child, a little child!"

"Steady, Mary, steady!" said he, "the child's dead. It's all over.
He's quite dead. He never knew what hit him." But his own voice
trembled.

She made a mighty effort to control herself, and he tried to take her in
his arms, to comfort her, but she sprang away from him with fierce
energy.

"Very well!" she said. "You are right! The child is dead. We can not
save him. No one can save him. Now come back--come here to the
window--and see what follows. I want to see with my own eyes--and have
you see--what is done when your cars commit murder! Child murder!"

She held up her watch. "It's 12:10 now," she said.

She dragged him back to the window, and so evident was the struggle with
which she controlled herself, so intense her agonized excitement, that
he dared not leave her.

"Look!" she cried. "Look! See the them crowd now!"

The first horrified rush away from the instrument of death was followed
by the usual surging multitude.

From every direction people gathered thickly in astonishing numbers,
hustling and pushing about the quiet form upon the ground; held so flat
between iron rails and iron wheels, so great a weight on so small a
body! The car, still empty, rose like an island from the pushing sea of
heads. Men and women cried excited directions. They tried with
swarming impotent hands to lift the huge mass of wood and iron off the
small broken thing beneath it, so small that it did not raise the
crushing weight from the ground.

A whole line of excited men seized the side rail and strove to lift the
car by it, lifting only the rail.

The crowd grew momently, women weeping, children struggling to see, men
pushing each other, policemen's helmets rising among them. And still
the great car stood there, on the body of the child.

"Is there no means of lifting these monsters?" she demanded. "After
they have done it, can't they even get off."

He moistened his lips to answer.

"There is a jacking crew," he said. "They will be here presently."

"Presently!" she cried. "Presently! Couldn't these monsters use their
own power to lift themselves somehow? not even that?"

He said nothing.

More policemen came, and made a scant space around the little body,
covering it with a dark cloth. The motorman was rescued from many would
be avengers, and carried off under guard.

"Ten minutes," said she looking at her watch. "Ten minutes and it isn't
even off him yet!" and she caught her breath in a great sob.

Then she turned on the man at her side: "Suppose his mother is in that
crowd! She may be! Their children go to this school, they live all
about below here, she can't even get in to see! And if she could, if
she knew it was her child, she can't _get him out_!"

Her voice rose to a cry.

"Don't, Mary," said he, hoarsely. "It's--it's horrible! Don't make it
worse!"

She kept her eyes on her watch-face, counting the minutes She looked
down at the crowd shudderingly, and said over and over, under breath, "A
little child! A little soft child!"

It was twelve minutes and a-half before the jacking crew drove up, with
their tools. It was a long time yet before they did their work, and
that crushed and soiled little body was borne to a near-by area grating
and laid there, wrapped in its dingy shroud, and guarded by a policeman.

It was a full half hour before the ambulance arrived to take it away.

She drew back then and crouched sobbing by the sofa. "O the poor
mother! God help his mother!"

He sat tense and white for a while; and when she grew quieter he spoke.

"You were right, Mary. I--naturally, I never--visualized it! It is
horrible! I am going to have those fenders on every car of the four
systems!"

She said nothing. He spoke again.

"I hate to leave you feeling so, Dear. Must I go?"

She raised a face that was years older, but did not look at him.

"You must go. And you must never come back. I cannot bear to see your
face again!"

And she turned from him, shuddering.

BEFORE WARM FEBRUARY WINDS

Before warm February winds
Arouse an April dream--
Or sudden rifts of azure sky
Suggest the bluebird's gleam;

Before the reddening woods awake,
Before the brooks are free--
Here where all things are sold and hired,
The driven months we see.

Wither along our snow-soiled streets,
Or under glass endure,
Fruits of the days that have not come,
Exotic--premature.

I hear in raw, unwelcome dawns
The sordid sparrows sing,
And in the florist's windows watch
The forced and purchased spring.

KITCHEN-MINDEDNESS

It is physically possible to see through a knot-hole. If the eye be
near enough, and the board be movable, one can, with patient rotation,
see the universe in spots, through a knot-hole. Such a purview is
limited of necessity, and while suitable to the microscope, is not
congenial to the study of life in general.

When those who would save the forests of America began their work, the
burden of effort lay in so stimulating and stretching the mental vision
of our people, that they could see wider than their own immediate
acreage, deeper than their own immediate profit, further than their own
immediate time. Some such struggle was no doubt gone through, when that
far-seeing iconoclast of early times strove to prove to the greedy
hunter that more food was to be attained by breeding cattle than by
killing them all at once; that meat kept better when alive. What mental
labor, what arduous conflict between that prehistoric ant and
grasshopper!

Steadily up the ages the mind of man has had to stretch, and sturdily
has he resisted the process. That protoplasmic substance of the brain,
used so much and understood so little, astonishes us no less by its
infinite capacity for new extension, for endless fluent combination,
than by its leaden immobility. Here are some, open-minded, sensitive
and hospitable to new impressions; and here are others, an innumerable
majority, preferring always to know only what they have known, to think
only what they have thought before. The distinction does not seem
innate. A normal child provided with proper stimulus, responds with
ever fresh interest as field after field of new fact and new idea opens
before him.

Twenty years later that same child has lost this capacity, has become
dull, inert, conventional, conservative, contented. Upon his growing
mind have been imposed in long succeeding years, the iron limitations of
his "elders and betters"; only in the rarest of cases has he the mental
strength to resist these influences and "think new," think for himself.

Here we all are, living together in relations as complex as the pattern
of some mighty tapestry; each of us, seeing only his own part in it,
considering the pattern from the point of view of a stitch. This
attitude is exquisitely expressed by the reply of a dull student to the
earnest teacher who strove to arouse in him some spontaneous opinion on
human conduct. With enthusiasm and dramatic force, this instructor
exhibited the career of Nero,--showed his list of crimes natural and
unnatural, personal and political; his indecency, and cruelty, demanding
what should be said of the monster. The student, spurred by questions,
some-what fretfully responded, "He never did anything to me!"

Consciousness is of varying range. We know its gradual development, its
narrow field in childhood, its permanent restriction in idiocy. We know
how it may be developed, even in animals, how we have added to the dog's
field of consciousness a deep and passionate interest in his master's
life; how a well-befriended cat becomes desperately uneasy, when the
family begins to pack for a journey. We know personally the difference
between our range of thought at one age, and at another; how one's
consciousness may include wider and wider fields of knowledge, longer
ranges of time, deeper causal relations; and how the same object, viewed
by different minds, may arouse in one as it were, a square inch, and in
the other a square mile of consciousness. Those of us, who have the
larger area under cultivation,--who are accustomed to think of human
life as age-long, world-wide, and in motion, learn to see human conduct,
not as something in neat detachable strata, like a pile of plates, but
as having long roots and longer branches, and requiring careful handling
to alter.

To these, studying the world's affairs, clear lines of causal sequence
present themselves. Is it a thousand cases of typhoid? They trace the
fever to its lair as one would hunt a tiger; they point out every step
of its course; they call on the citizens to rise and fight the enemy, to
save their lives. Do the citizens do it? Not they. Individually they
suffer and die. Individually they grieve and mourn, bury,their dead
(when they should cremate them), and pay the doctor and the undertaker.
Hundreds of dollars they pay as individuals to nurses, doctors,
graveyard men, and monument makers. If, collectively they would put up
a tenth of the sum to ensure a pure water and milk supply, they would
save not only hundreds for themselves, but thousands and millions for
those after them.--to say nothing of grief!

But they look at life through a knot-hole. They see their own personal
affairs as things of sky-shadowing importance, and those same affairs,
taken collectively, become as remote and uninteresting as the Milky Way.

Now in the mere labor of intellectual comprehension our average citizen
of common-school education is able to see that where so much tuberculous
milk is fed into so many babies, that such a proportion will surely die.
He sees, but it does interest him. Show him tubercular bacilli from
the autopsy of his dead baby, show him the same in the bottle of milk
reposing in his refrigerator, and show him the man who put them
there--and you may get results.

He could see the larger facts, but only feel the smaller ones. It is a
limitation of consciousness.

All workers for human advance know this. Whatever the cause upheld,
those who work for it find everywhere the same difficulty; they have to
stretch the minds, to stimulate the consciousness, to arouse the
interest of their hearers, so that they will take action for the common
good.

In one field it is easy, that of public danger from war. The reason is
clear. Wars are carried on by men, and men have reacted to conflict
stimuli collectively, for so many ages, that it is a race habit with
them. Only in the last extreme of terror is this habit broken, and the
battle turns to rout, with every man for himself. Then comes the
officer and strives to rekindle that common consciousness without which
is no human victory.

In the economic world our habits of organization are not so old. We
have fought in company since we fought at all, as humans; but we have
worked, for the most part alone. The comradeship of shop and factory is
of yesterday, compared to the solitary spindle, loom and forge of
earlier centuries. Yet in that comradeship wherever found, comes the
new consciousness, that recognizes common danger or common gain, and
substitutes the army for the mob, the victory for the rout.

This effect is so strong, so clear, so quick in appearance, that even
with one poor century or two of economic combination, we ought to find
much better results than we do. Where the common interest is as clear
as day, where the common strength is so irresistible, where the loss and
the danger lie so wholly in isolation, one wonders over and over at the
lack of comprehension which keeps us so helplessly apart.

We can see the immense activities of the nation, the multiplication of
national wealth, power, and progress,--the saving of life, the
elimination of disease, the development of art and science, of beauty
and of health and glorious living that we might have, but we cannot feel
these things. Therefore we do not act.

Can there be still among us some general cause, acting on everyone,
which mysteriously checks out progress, which makes us "penny-wise and
pound-foolish," makes us "save at the spigot and spend at the
bung-hole," which continually intensifies our consciousness of personal
interest and continually prevents the recognition of social interests?

It may seem almost grotesque to make so heavy a complaint as this, and
then to put forward as chief offender our old companion the kitchen.

Briefly the charge is this: that in the private kitchen, we maintain in
our civilization an economic institution as old as house-building,
almost as old as the use of fire. The results of this surviving
rudiment of a remote past are many. The one presented here is the
effect of the kitchen on the mind.

The condition is practically universal. For each house a kitchen. Be
it the merest hut, the smallest tenement, one room; wherever the family
is found, there is the kitchen. For each man there is a cook. In the
great majority of cases the man's wife is his cook, and as she must
spend most of her time in the kitchen, there must be her little ones
also. In fifteen-sixteenths of American families, the children are thus
reared,--by cooks in kitchens.

We, in our fatuous acceptance of race habits, have ceaselessly
perpetuated this kitchen-bred population, and even defended it as an
educational influence of no mean importance. "Children brought up by
their mothers in the kitchen," we say, "early acquire knowledge and
skill in various occupations; they see things done, and learn how to do
them themselves."

This seems to the superficial listener like good sense. He never looks
below the allegation for the evidence. He sees that daily observation,
and practice should develop knowledge and skill, and fails to inquire
further to see if it does.

Surely if all children were brought up in blacksmith shops, it would
make them good blacksmiths; if they were brought up in dental parlors
they would become good dentists!

Waiving the desirability of a form of training calculated to turn out an
unvarying population of cooks, let us see if this daily association with
the maternal house-servant in her workshop does educate as stated. On
this point one clear comment has been made: "If kitchen life is such
good training to mind and hand, why is it that so few of us are willing
to follow the kitchen trades when we are grown? and why is it that
competence in the kitchen is so rare?" This is a most practical
observation. If fifteen-sixteenths of our women followed incessantly
the occupation of shoemaking, and brought up their children in the shoe
shop, we should hardly claim great educational advantages for that
arrangement. If we did, would it not be disappointing to find that the
trade of shoemaking was universally disliked and despised, and that good
shoemakers were hard to find at any price?

Yet this is precisely the case in hand. Our kitchen-bred children, boy
and girl alike, prefer almost any other trade, and when we wish to
secure competent workers in the kitchen we find them extremely scarce.

Moreover, in its own special activities, the private kitchen makes no
advance. Advance comes to it from outside; from the wider and more
progressive professionalism of its various industries; specialized and
socialized one by one. But, left to itself, domestic cook hands down to
domestic cook the recipes of female ancestors, occasionally added to by
obliging friends. It is endless repetition, but not progress.

The purpose of this discussion, however, is not to show the inefficacy
of this ancient workshop, as a means of carrying on that great art,
science, handicraft, and business--the preparation of food; but to point
out the effect of the kitchen on the human mind.

The one dominant note of kitchen work is personality. Its products are
all prepared for home consumption only. Its provisions are all secured
and its processes directed with a view to pleasing a small group. It
does not and cannot consider the general questions of hygiene, of
nutrition, of the chemistry of improved processes of preparation, and
the immense and pressing problems of pure food.

The kitchen mind, focussed continually upon close personal concerns,
limited in time, in means, in capacity, and in mechanical convenience,
can consider only; a, what the family likes; b, what the family can
afford; and, c, what the cook can accomplish.

The most perfect type of organization we have is the military. Military
success depends most absolutely on the commissary and sanitary
departments. "An army travels on its belly," is the famous dictum.

Is there any difference in this respect between soldiers and other
people? Are we not all gasteropods whether singly or in regiments? Is
not the health and strength of the productive workers of the world, at
least as valuable as that of the cumbrous forces of destruction?

In our last little war, and in the big one before that, disease killed
more than sword and steel. We lament this--in armies. We prefer to
keep our soldiers healthy that they may fight more strongly, and die
more efficaciously, and this sick list is pure waste.

Is it any less waste in private life? Can we easily afford the loss in
money--annual billions; the loss in strength, the loss in intellect, the
loss in love, that falls on us so heavily from year to year? Study the
record of man's fight with disease. See how the specialists devoting
not only lifetimes, but the accumulating succession of lifetimes to the
study of causes, cures and preventions, announce to us at last, "thus
and thus are you made sick. Thus may you be cured, and thus may you so
live as to be well."

See then the sanitary work of an aroused public; a truth is discovered;
a truth is announced; a law is made; the law is enforced--a disease is
conquered.

This is vividly shown in the work of our Government against
pleuro-pneumonia--in cattle. The Federal Government, furnishing
information and funds, and cooperating with the various States, attacked
that disease, and stamped it out completely.

There is an effort now to rouse our government to fight the White
Plague, in people as well as in cattle. And, as always, the difficulty
is to stir and stretch and rouse our kitchen minds, to make us see
things in common instead of individually. The men whose cattle had
pleuro-pneumonia, kept them in herds, and lost them in herds, losing
much money thereby. Many men were so afflicted. Therefore these many
men got together, and, using the machinery of the State, they together
destroyed their enemy. Cattle-raising is a business, a social industry.

But child-raising, husband-feeding, the care of the lives and health of
all our families, is a domestic industry, in the management of the
kitchen mind.

it has been shown recently that 72 per cent. of the cattle in New York
State are tuberculous. This does not kill them quickly like
pleuro-pneumonia. They live and may be sold. They live and may give
milk. It has been shown recently (as stated in our unimpeachable daily
press), that in some of the milk sold in New York City, there were more
germs to the cubic millimeter, than in the same amount of sewage!

This milk, and most of the milk in all our cities, goes into the
kitchen; the blind, brainless, family-feeding kitchen, and from there is
given us to drink.

What protest rises from the kitchens of New York, or Chicago, or any
city? What mass-meeting of angry women, presenting to their legislators
the horrible facts of strong men poisoned and babies slain by this or
any other abomination in the food supply?

A young man writes a novel exhibiting the badness of our meat supply.
Men become excited. Men take action. Men legislate. The great meat
industries stagger under the shock, recover, and go on smiling. Before
this meanwhile, and afterwards, the meat went into out kitchens and we
ate it.

Being kitchen-minded we cannot see that health is a public concern; that
the feeding of our people is one of the most vital factors in their
health, and that the private kitchen with its private cook is not able
to keep the public well.

Ask the physician, the sanitary expert. He will tell you that the great
advance in sanitary science is in its battle with the filth diseases;
and that we die worse than ever from food diseases.

In fighting the filth diseases we have the public forces to work with;
compulsory systems of sewage and drainage, quarantine, isolation
hospitals, and all the other maneuvers by which an enlightened public
protects itself.

But who shall say what a child shall eat, or a man or woman? Is it not
wholly their own affair?

We cry out upon our women for the falling birth rate;--why not say
something about the death rate of their babies? The average family must
have four, merely to maintain a stationary population, said Grant Allen;
"two to replace themselves and two to die." The doctor will tell you
that they die mostly of what are called "preventable diseases" and that
those diseases are mainly of the alimentary canal.

Kitchen-fed are we all, and those of us who survive it, who become
immune to it, cry loudly of its excellence! If we could once see
outside of these ancient limits, once figure to ourselves the vision of
a healthy world, and the noble duty of making it,--then we should no
longer be kitchen-minded.

Our narrowness of vision, our petty self-interest, does not end its
injuries with our bodily health. Its leaden limitation is felt in all
the economic field.

Not a business have we in the world but needs to be considered as a
matter of public service; needs to be studied, helped, restricted,
generally managed for the public good. Not a business in the world but
is crippled and distorted by the childish self-interest of its
promoters. Kitchen-bred men born of kitchen-bred mothers are we, and
inevitably must we consider the main duty of life to be the service of
our own body. What else does the child see his mother do, but work,
work, work to cover the family table with food three times a day, and
clear up afterward? What else can he grow up to do but work, work,
work, to provide the wherewithal for another woman to do the same?

A million women are making bread as their mothers made it. How many
women are trying to lift the standard of bread-making for their country?
How many even know the difference in nutriment and digestibility
between one bread and another?

They do not think "bread," but only "my bread." Their view of the staff
of life is kitchen-minded. When our kitchen trades become world trades,
when we are fed, not by the most ignorant, but by the wisest; when
personal whims and painfully acquired habits give place to the light of
science, and the fruit of wide experience; when, instead of dragging
duty or sordid compulsion, we have wisdom and art to feed us; the change
will be far greater than that of improved health. It will be a great
and valuable advance even there. We shall become healthy, clean-fleshed
people, intelligent eaters, each generation improving in strength and
beauty, but we shall be helped in wider ways than that. We shall have
the enlarged mental capacity that comes of a wider area of work and
responsibility. We shall have in each man and woman the habitual power
of organization, the daily recognition of mutual service and world-duty.

When the world comes out of the kitchen for good and all, and for that
primitive little shop is substituted the cool glittering laboratory,
wherein the needs of bodily replenishment are fully and beautifully met,
it will give to the growing child a different background for his thought
processes. At last we shall mark the great division between production,
which is the social function, and consumption which is personal.

As we now emerge from the warm and greasy confines of our ancient
cookshop, we begin to see with new eyes its true place as an economic
factor. We are learning the unbridled waste of it; how it costs
struggling humanity about forty-three per cent. of its productive labor,
and two-thirds of its living expenses; how it does not conserve the very
end for which we uphold it,--the health of the family; how it leaves us
helpless before the adulterators of food, the purveyors of impure milk,
diseased meat, and all unpleasantness. We are beginning to see how,
most dangerous of all, it works against our economic progress, by
perpetuating a primitive selfishness.

Public interest grows in public service. Self-interest is maintained by
self-service. We can neither rightly estimate social gain, nor rightly
condemn social evil, because we are so soddenly habituated to consider
only personal gain, personal good and personal evil; because we are
kitchen-minded.

TWO STORKS

Two storks were nesting.

He was a young stork--and narrow-minded. Before he married he had
consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no
thought to the ladies, either maid or matron.

After he married his attention was concentrated upon his All-Satisfying
Wife; upon that Triumph of Art, Labor, and Love--their Nest, and upon
those Special Creations--their Children. Deeply was he moved by the
marvellous instincts and processes of motherhood. Love, reverence,
intense admiration, rose in his heart for Her of the Well-built Nest;
Her of the Gleaming Treasure of Smooth Eggs; Her of the Patient Brooding
Breast, the Warming Wings, the downy wide-mouthed Group of Little Ones.

Assiduously he labored to help her build the nest, to help her feed the
young; proud of his impassioned activity in her and their behalf;
devoutly he performed his share of the brooding, while she hunted in her
turn. When he was o-wing he thought continually of Her as one with the
Brood--His Brood. When he was on the nest he thought all the more of
Her, who sat there so long, so lovingly, to such noble ends.

The happy days flew by, fair Spring--sweet Summer--gentle Autumn. The
young ones grew larger and larger; it was more and more work to keep
their lengthening, widening beaks shut in contentment. Both parents
flew far afield to feed them.

Then the days grew shorter, the sky greyer, the wind colder; there was
less hunting and small success. In his dreams he began to see sunshine,
broad, burning sunshine day after day; skies of limitless blue; dark,
deep, yet full of fire; and stretches of bright water, shallow, warm,
fringed with tall reeds and rushes, teeming with fat frogs.

They were in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

He stretched his wings and flew farther every day; but his wings were
not satisfied. In his dreams came a sense of vast heights and boundless
spaces of the earth streaming away beneath him; black water and white
land, grey water and brown land, blue water and green land, all flowing
backward from day to day, while the cold lessened and the warmth grew.

He felt the empty sparkling nights, stars far above, quivering, burning;
stars far below, quivering more in the dark water; and felt his great
wings wide, strong, all sufficient, carrying him on and on!

This was in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

"It is time to Go!" he cried one day. "They are coming! It is upon us!
Yes--I must Go! Goodbye my wife! Goodbye my children!" For the
Passion of Wings was upon him.

She too was stirred to the heart. "Yes! It is time to Go! To Go!" she
cried. "I am ready! Come!"

He was shocked; grieved; astonished. "Why, my Dear!" he said. "How
preposterous! You cannot go on the Great Flight! Your wings are for
brooding tender little ones! Your body is for the Wonder of the
Gleaming Treasure!--not for days and nights of ceaseless soaring! You
cannot go!"

She did not heed him. She spread her wide wings and swept and circled
far and high above--as, in truth, she had been doing for many days,
though he had not noticed it.

She dropped to the ridge-pole beside him where he was still muttering
objections. "Is it not glorious!" she cried. "Come! They are nearly
ready!"

"You unnatural Mother!" he burst forth. "You have forgotten the Order
of Nature! You have forgotten your Children! Your lovely precious
tender helpless Little Ones!" And he wept--for his highest ideals were
shattered.

But the Precious Little Ones stood in a row on the ridge-pole and
flapped their strong young wings in high derision. They were as big as
he was, nearly; for as a matter of fact he was but a Young Stork
himself.

Then the air was beaten white with a thousand wings, it was like snow
and silver and seafoam, there was a flashing whirlwind, a hurricane of
wild joy and then the Army of the Sky spread wide in due array and
streamed Southward.

Full of remembered joy and more joyous hope, finding the high sunlight
better than her dreams, she swept away to the far summerland; and her
children, mad with the happiness of the First Flight, swept beside her.

"But you are a Mother!" he panted, as he caught up with them.

"Yes!" she cried, joyously, "but I was a Stork before I was A Mother!
and afterward!--and All the Time!"

And the Storks were Flying.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER IV.

A CRYING NEED

"Lovest thou me?" said the Fair Ladye;
And the Lover he said, "Yea!"
"Then climb this tree--for my sake," said she,
"And climb it every day!"
So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark
And wore his clothes away;
Till, "What has this tree to do with thee?"
The Lover at last did say.

It was a poor dinner. Cold in the first place, because Isabel would
wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another
dress. She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse
on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the
round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair,
silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown,
specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set
the table so well--and cooked the steak so abominably.

Isabel was never a cook. In the many servantless gaps of domestic life
in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the Porne
household.

"Dear," said Mr. Porne, "might I petition to have the steak less cooked?
I know you don't like to do it, so why not shorten the process?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, "I always forget about the steak from one
time to the next."

"Yet we've had it three times this week, my dear."

"I thought you liked it better than anything," she with marked
gentleness. "I'll get you other things--oftener."

"It's a shame you should have this to do, Isabel. I never meant you
should cook for me. Indeed I didn't dream you cared so little about
it."

"And I never dreamed you cared so much about it," she replied, still
with repression. "I'm not complaining, am I? I'm only sorry you should
be disappointed in me."

"It's not _you,_ dear girl! You're all right! It's just this
everlasting bother. Can't you get _anybody_ that will stay?"

I can't seem to get anybody on any terms, so far. I'm going again,
to-morrow. Cheer up, dear--the baby keeps well--that's the main thing."

He sat on the rose-bowered porch and smoked while she cleared the table.
At first he had tried to help her on these occasions, but their methods
were dissimilar and she frankly told him she preferred to do it alone.

So she slipped off the silk and put on the gingham again, washed the
dishes with the labored accuracy of a trained mind doing unfamiliar
work, made the bread, redressed at last, and joined him about nine
o'clock.

"It's too late to go anywhere, I suppose?" he ventured.

"Yes--and I'm too tired. Besides--we can't leave Eddie alone."

"O yes--I forget. Of course we can't."

His hand stole out to take hers. "I _am_ sorry, dear. It's awfully
rough on you women out here. How do they all stand it?"

"Most of them stand it much better than I do, Ned. You see they don't
want to be doing anything else."

"Yes. That's the mischief of it!" he agreed; and she looked at him in
the clear moonlight, wondering exactly what he thought the mischief was.

"Shall we go in and read a bit?" he offered; but she thought not.

"I'm too tired, I'm afraid. And Eddie'll wake up as soon as we begin."

So they sat awhile enjoying the soft silence, and the rich flower scents
about them, till Eddie did wake presently, and Isabel went upstairs.

She slept little that night, lying quite still, listening to her
husband's regular breathing so near her, and the lighter sound from the
crib. "I am a very happy woman," she told herself resolutely; but there
was no outpouring sense of love and joy. She knew she was happy, but by
no means felt it. So she stared at the moon shadows and thought it
over.

She had planned the little house herself, with such love, such hope,
such tender happy care! Not her first work, which won high praise in
the school in Paris, not the prize-winning plan for the library, now
gracing Orchardina's prettiest square, was as dear to her as this most
womanly task--the making of a home.

It was the library success which brought her here, fresh from her
foreign studies, and Orchardina accepted with western cordiality the
youth and beauty of the young architect, though a bit surprised at first
that "I. H. Wright" was an Isabel. In her further work of overseeing
the construction of that library, she had met Edgar Porne, one of the
numerous eager young real estate men of that region, who showed a
liberal enthusiasm for the general capacity of women in the professions,
and a much warmer feeling for the personal attractions of this one.

Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they
watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks
and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner. He was so
sympathetic! so admiring! He took as much pride in the big "drawing
room" on the third floor as she did herself. "Architecture is such fine
work to do at home!" they had both agreed. "Here you have your north
light--your big table--plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser
and famouser," he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, "I fear
I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."

That was only some year and a-half ago,--but Isabel, lying there by her
sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by
assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a
delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop
of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the
mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through
the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded
parlor--two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!--dust in
the dining-room gathered since yesterday--the dust in the kitchen--she
would not count time there, and the dust--here she counted it
inexorably--the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom
upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.

Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and
looked at the house--as she used to look at it with him, before they
were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of
wedded joy--it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this
dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks,
continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by
bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the
well-proportioned door--the Gate of Happiness--and a musty smell greeted
her--she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the
parlor--no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a
day to keep that room as she liked it.

From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the
exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each
one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in--and the work
undone.

"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and
common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough--in my own
work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any
better than I do.--He don't have to!--and then such a wave of bitterness
rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch
the crib--the other to her husband.

He awakened instantly. "What is it, Dear?" he asked. "Too tired to
sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don't you?"

"O _yes_!" she answered. "I do. Of _course_ I do! I'm just tired, I
guess. Goodnight, Sweetheart."

She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.

When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr.
Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper.
Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no
attention to the sounds of wailing from above.

"Well if you won't I will!" burst forth the father at last, and ran
upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who
ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the
moment, with a teaspoon.

"Aren't you going to feed him?" asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.

"It isn't time yet," she announced wearily. "He has to have his bath
first."

"Well," with a patience evidently forced farther, "isn't it time to feed
me?"

"I'm very sorry," she said. "The oatmeal is burned again. You'll have
to eat cornflakes. And--the cream is sour--the ice didn't come--or at
least, perhaps I was out when it came--and then I forgot it. . . . . I
had to go to the employment agency in the morning! . . . . I'm sorry I'm
so--so incompetent."

"So am I," he commented drily. "Are there any crackers for instance?
And how about coffee?"

She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk.
Also crackers, and fruit. She took the baby and sat silent.

"Shall I come home to lunch?" he asked.

"Perhaps you'd better not," she replied coldly.

"Is there to be any dinner?"

"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself."

"If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty," said he,
trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. "Now
don't take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect,
anyhow--one can't be everything. We'll get another girl in time. This
is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble."

"Most women seem better able to meet it!" she burst forth. "It's not my
trade! I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't _bear_
housework! I can't seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not
do it properly!"

"Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But
cheer up, dear. It's no killing matter. Order by phone, don't forget
the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help. Don't cry, dear girl,
I love you, even if you aren't a good cook! And you love me, don't
you?"

He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving
hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once
more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to
the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing
with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder. The bread she
made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans;
perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the
heat.

Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the
big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and
swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she
shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to
put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down
suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing
the dining-room door behind her.

She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest
and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising
anger kept the tears back.

"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly,
remembering the baby, "And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his
wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him!
But--_this_ is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He
hasn't had to change his business!"

She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and
laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.

"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and
you get married--and after that it's Housework!"

"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?' 'Will you be my Chamber maid?'
'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love--that
has big hope and power and beauty in it--and come and keep house for
me?'"

"Love him? I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't! What has 'love' to
do with dust and grease and flies!"

Then she did drop on the small sofa and cry tempestuously for a little
while; but soon arose, fiercely ashamed of her weakness, and faced the
day; thinking of the old lady who had so much to do she couldn't think
what to first--so she sat down and made a pincushion.

Then--where to begin!

"Eddie will sleep till half-past ten--if I'm lucky. It's now nearly
half-past nine," she meditated aloud. "If I do the upstairs work I
might wake him. I mustn't forget the bread, the dishes, the parlor--O
those flies! Well--I'll clear the table first!"

Stepping softly, and handling the dishes with slow care, she cleaned the
breakfast table and darkened the dining-room, flapping out some of the
flies with a towel. Then she essayed the parlor, dusting and arranging
with undecided steps. "It _ought_ to be swept," she admitted to
herself; "I can't do it--there isn't time. I'll make it dark--"

"I'd rather plan a dozen houses!" she fiercely muttered, as she fussed
about. "Yes--I'd rather build 'em--than to keep one clean!"

Then were her hopes dashed by a rising wail from above. She sat quite
still awhile, hoping against hope that he would sleep again; but he
wouldn't. So she brought him down in full cry.

In her low chair by the window she held him and produced bright and
jingling objects from the tall workbasket that stood near by, sighing
again as she glanced at its accumulated mending.

Master Eddy grew calm and happy in her arms, but showed a growing
interest in the pleasing materials produced for his amusement, and a
desire for closer acquaintance. Then a penetrating odor filled the air,
and with a sudden "O dear!" she rose, put the baby on the sofa, and
started toward the kitchen.

At this moment the doorbell rang.

Mrs. Porne stopped in her tracks and looked at the door. It remained
opaque and immovable. She looked at the baby--who jiggled his spools
and crowed. Then she flew to the oven and dragged forth the bread, not
much burned after all. Then she opened the door.

A nice looking young woman stood before her, in a plain travelling suit,
holding a cheap dress-suit case in one hand and a denim "roll-bag" in
the other, who met her with a cheerful inquiring smile.

"Are you Mrs. Edgar Porne?" she asked.

"I am," answered that lady, somewhat shortly, her hand on the doorknob,
her ear on the baby, her nose still remorsefully in the kitchen, her
eyes fixed sternly on her visitor the while; as she wondered whether it
was literature, cosmetics, or medicine.

She was about to add that she didn't want anything, when the young lady
produced a card from the Rev. Benjamin A. Miner, Mrs. Porne's
particularly revered minister, and stated that she had heard there was a
vacancy in her kitchen and she would like the place.

"Introducing Mrs. D. Bell, well known to friends of mine."

"I don't know--" said Mrs. Porne, reading the card without in the least
grasping what it said. "I--"

Just then there was a dull falling sound followed by a sharp rising one,
and she rushed into the parlor without more words.

When she could hear and be heard again, she found Mrs. Bell seated in
the shadowy little hall, serene and cool. "I called on Mr. Miner
yesterday when I arrived," said she, "with letters of introduction from
my former minister, told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he
could suggest anyone in immediate need of help in this line. He said he
had called here recently, and believed you were looking for someone.
Here is the letter I showed him," and she handed Mrs. Porne a most
friendly and appreciative recommendation of Miss D. Bell by a minister
in Jopalez, Inca Co., stating that the bearer was fully qualified to do
all kinds of housework, experienced, honest, kind, had worked seven
years in one place, and only left it hoping to do better in Southern
California.

Backed by her own pastor's approval this seemed to Mrs. Porne fully
sufficient. The look of the girl pleased her, though suspiciously above
her station in manner; service of any sort was scarce and high in
Orchardina, and she had been an agelong week without any. "When can you
come?" she asked.

"I can stop now if you like," said the stranger. "This is my baggage.
But we must arrange terms first. If you like to try me I will come this
week from noon to-day to noon next Friday, for seven dollars, and then
if you are satisfied with my work we can make further arrangements. I
do not do laundry work, of course, and don't undertake to have any care
of the baby."

"I take care of my baby myself!" said Mrs. Porne, thinking the new girl
was presuming, though her manner was most gently respectful. But a week
was not long, she was well recommended, and the immediate pressure in
that kitchen where the harvest was so ripe and the laborers so
few--"Well--you may try the week," she said. "I'll show you your room.
And what is your name?"

"Miss Bell."

LITTLE LEAFY BROTHERS

Little, leafy brothers! You can feel
Warmth o' the sun,
Cool sap-streams run,
The slow, soft, nuzzling creep
Of roots sent deep,
And a close-anchored flowing
In winds smooth-blowing.
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing--
The world's love in you grows
Into the rose!

Little hairy brothers! You can feel
The kind sun too;
Winds play with you,
Water is live delight;
In your swift flight
Of wings or leaping feet
Life rushes sweet--
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing--
The world's love stirs you first
To wild, sweet thirst,
Mad combat glorious, and so
To what you know
Of love in living. Yes, to you first came
The joy past name
Of interchange--the small mouth pressed
To the warm, willing breast.

But O! the human brothers! We can feel
All, all below
These small ones know;
Earth fair and good,
The bubbling flood
Of life a-growing--in us multiplied
As man spreads wide;
Not into leaves alone,
Nor flesh and bone,
But roof and wall and wheel
Of stone and steel;
Soft foliage and gorgeous bloom
Of humming loom;
And fruit of joy o'er-burdened heart
Poured forth in Art!
We can not only leap in the sun,
Wrestle and run,
But know the music-measured beat
Of dancing feet,
The interplay of hands--we hold
Delight of doing, myriad-fold.
Joy of the rose, we know--
To bloom--to grow!--
Joy of the beast we prove--
To strive--to move!
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing,
Wide gladness of all living men
Comes back again,
A conscious universe at rest
In one's own breast!
The world's love! Wholly ours;
Through breathing flowers,
Through all the living tumult of the wood,
In us made good;
Through centuries that rise and fall--
We hold it all!
The world's love! Given music, fit
To carry it.
The world's love! Given words at last, to speak,
Though yet so weak.
The world's love! Given hands that hold so much,
Lips that may touch!
The worlds's love! Sweet!--it lies
In your dear eyes!

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

IV.

MEN AND ART.

Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in
human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women
artists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are
either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling
exceptions which do but prove the rule.

Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their
performances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts.
What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? And
what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine
expression?

When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a period of
crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings. Tattooing,
for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice
among certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are
in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves
therewith; some do so--to later mortification. Early personal
decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the
hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see
among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by
men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them.
In personal decoration today, women are still near the savage. The
"artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the
sartorial, and all those specialized adorners of the body commonly known
as "beauty doctors."

Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatest
milliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatest
hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative
toilettes and accessories, are men. Women, in this as in so many other
lines, consume rather than produce. They carry the major part of
personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man. In the
decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry,
originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry,
leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing and
embroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator.
Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The
art which is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making
beauty in every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is
not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are
so few women of note.

Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and
by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate
and become slaves in varying degree. The women who were idle pets in
harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off
from the joy of making things. Where constructive work remained to
them, art remained, in its early decorative form. Men, in the
proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to
personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much
impoverished the world.

There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development
of women than this commonplace--their lack of a civilized art sense.
Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in
the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the
arrest in normal growth.

After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture,
Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in their
primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted;
doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and
"tidies"--as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower
race.

This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning
of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large.
Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one
line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they
have in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they
have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as
it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste.

Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, some so
pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is
especially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements of
amusement. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going
on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their efforts
hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the
amazing indifference of the world at large. As the world at large
consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem
patent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowed to
rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been the
method--heretofore.

We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art
through their interference with the art of women. There are other sides
to the question. Let us consider once more the essential
characteristics of maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping
always in mind the triune distinction between masculine, feminine and
human. Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what
the development of art might have been on purely human terms.

The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and
adds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making little
regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human
instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition,
and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in
us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of
specialists--artists of all sorts--and an accompanying development of
appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in
primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular
appreciation of her work--or his.

Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic
expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the one
field of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium of
expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and
the decoration of them--all this is human work and human pleasure. It
should have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasure
to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed.

Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the
stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegated
folly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the
dignity of childhood by modes of dress.

In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; our
furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into
beauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of social
evolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit.

Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to
some degree, either in production or appreciation, or both. "Pure art,"
as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true
artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the social
sacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized
for inter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of
the social Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work is
wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the
bread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community;
the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything we
have; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work
thereof, spread far and wide.

What do we find?

Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or the
user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect
few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an
occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and
evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly.

Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to our
Androcentric Culture.

As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to
perform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance
the advantages--and disadvantages--of maleness, of those dominant
characteristics, desire, combat, self-expression.

Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominent in
painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully
degraded dancing.

Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a
high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression.
This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that
most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of the universe. In the very nature of the
sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts,
gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That
projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere; the constant
urge toward expression, to all boasting and display. This spirit, like
all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place.

It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a
thousand changing modifications--the female, selecting, may so
incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thus
express himself--an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is one
thing, and art is another. Neither the masculine nor the feminine has
any place in art--Art is Human.

It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processes of
reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social
process, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends his
sex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers.

Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion
through the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as the
bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper
before their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form of
social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military,
and other. Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, as
among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music
held high place.

But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find
the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more
and more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a
mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all
males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social
dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression,
so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.

As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the
degrading effect of masculine dominance:--the dancing girl. In the
frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on
her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly
about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill
scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a
bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on
earth, is this degradation found--the female capering and prancing
before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not
hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art
wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one
clear cause.

Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause.
The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that
we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It
meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social
feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an
excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.

The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is
essentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of woman
and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home is
built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the
kitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery.

Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little
harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest
his ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physical
expression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world
with a small drab ugliness. A dwelling house is rarely a beautiful
object. In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural
relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.

The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general
taste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is
the natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in this
form.

In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some service
through many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line
of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the
human body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced under
the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize,
all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.

With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high
standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free
womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.

An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express socially
our noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as
the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity
and not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful
indeed, but never _decorated_. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills,
with rings in her ears--or nose.

Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the
one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence of
egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression,
which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male
for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of
human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other
feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base
essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it
forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.

As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for
fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual
emergence of the human note.

Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for
this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching
on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.

That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying
description--painting--is also a wide field; and cannot be done full
justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too much
masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit.
The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer
does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the
young and beautiful--sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of
feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader
line of work.

But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on
self-expression. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels,
strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so
generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that
what is called "the art world" accepts it as established.

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight
of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he,
personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest
importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive,
necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses
the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings in
drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly
as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.

The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the
more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less
personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

The literary output of the ancient Hebrews must have been great, since
we are told by their critical philosopher, "Of the making of many books
there is no end."

There must have been some limit, however, because their books were hand
made, and not everyone could do it. Since the printing press relieved
this mechanical restriction, and educational facilities made reading and
writing come, if not by nature, at least with general compulsion, the
making of books has increased to the present output--which would have
made the ancient philosopher blush for his premature complaint.

In this, as in all social functions, we have the normal and the abnormal
growth before us; but so far we have not learned to divide them. There
is no harm at all in having anybody and everybody write books if they
choose, any more than in having anybody and everybody talk if they
choose. Literature is only preserved speech.

Freedom of speech is dear to our hearts; it is an easy privilege, and
costs little--to the speaker. People are free to talk, privately and
publicly, and free to write, privately and publicly.

The harm comes, in this as in other processes, by the door of economic
interest. It is not the desire to write which crowds our market so
disadvantageously; it is the desire to sell.

Though a fair capacity in the art of literature were even more general
than to-day, if our social conditions were normal only a certain
proportion of us would naturally prefer that form of expression. Our
literary output is abnormally increased by two influences; the
hereditary and inculcated idea of superiority in this profession, and
the emoluments thereof. These last are greatly over-estimated, as, in
truth, is the first also.

There is nothing essentially more worthy in the art of saying things
than in the art of doing things. The basic merit in literature, as in
speech, lies in the thing said. This the makers of many books have
utterly forgotten. "She's a beautiful talker!" we might say of someone.
"It's perfectly lovely! Such language! Such expression! It's a joy
to hear her!"

Then an unenthusiastic person might rudely inquire, "Yes--but what does
she say?"

Talking is not fancy-work. It is not an exhibition of skill in the use
of the vocal chords, in knowledge of grammar and rhetoric. Speech is
developed in our race as a medium of transmission of thought and
feelings. The greater or less ease and proficiency with which we
elaborate the function should always be held subordinate to the real
use. Literature is to be similarly judged by its initial purpose, the
preservation and transmission of ideas and feelings. Even the
picture-work of fiction must carry a certain content of ideas, else it
cannot be read; it does not, as the children say, "make sense."

Now take up your current magazine--the largest medium of literary
expression to-day--and consider it from this point of view.

The modern magazine is a distinctly new product. When the slow, thick
stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the
new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary
production. The word "magazine" implies an armory, a storehouse, a
collection of valuable pieces of literature. Now we need a new word for
the thing. It has become a more and more fluent and varied mouthpiece
of popular expression. It is a halfway-house between the newspaper and
the book. The older, higher-priced, more impressive of them, keep up,
or try to keep up, the standards of the past; but the world of to-day is
by no means so much interested in "beautiful letters" as in the fresh
current of knowledge and feeling belonging to our times.

Articles about flying machines may or may not be "literature" but they
are small doses of information highly desirable to persons who have not
time enough, nor money enough, to read books.

If you have time, you can go to the libraries. If you have money, you
can order from your dealer.

If you have only ten cents--no, fifteen, it takes in these days of
prosperity--you can with that purchase a deal of valuable and
interesting matter, coming on fresh every month--or week.

Sweeping aside all the "instructive" articles as hopelessly without the
lofty pale of literature, we have left an overwhelming mass of fiction.
This, too, is ruthlessly condemned by the austere upholder of high
standards. This, too, is not literature.

What is literature?

Literature, in the esoteric sense of lofty criticism, is a form of
writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint
of utility. Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but
must not condescend to express anything.

To write with the narrow and vulgar purpose of saying something, is to
be cut off hopelessly from the elect few who produce literature. This
attitude of sublime superiority as an art is responsible for our general
scorn of what we call,

"The Novel With a Purpose."

Have any of us fairly faced the alternative? Are we content to accept
delightedly the "Novel Without a Purpose"?

Do you remember the Peterkin Papers? How Solomon John, the second son,
thought he would like to write a book? How Agammemnon, the oldest son,
and Elizabeth Eliza, the sister, and the Little Boys, in their beloved
rubber boots, as also the parents, were all mightily impressed with the
ambition of Solomon John? How a table was secured, and placed in the
proper light? How a chair was brought, paper was procured, and pens and
ink? How finally all was ready, and the entire family stood about in
rapt admiration to see Solomon John begin?

He drew the paper before him; he selected a pen; he dipped it in the ink
and poised it before him.

Then he looked from one to another, and an expression of pained surprise
spread over his features.

"Why," said Solomon John, "I have nothing to say!"

(I quote from memory, not having the classics at hand.)

There was great disappointment in the Peterkin family, and the project
was given up. But why so? Solomon John need not have been so easily
discouraged. He was in the exact position to produce literature--pure,
high, legitimate literature--the Novel Without a Purpose.

In the effort to preserve the purity of the Pierian Springs, those
guardians of this noble art, who arbitrate in the "standard magazines,"
condemn and exclude what they define as "controversial literature."

Suppose someone comes along with a story advocating euthanasia, showing
with all the force of the art of fiction the slow, hideous suffering of
some helpless cancer patient or the like, the blessed release that might
be humanly given; showing it so as to make an indelible impression--this
story is refused as "controversial," as being written with a purpose.

Yet the same magazine will print a story no better written, showing the
magnificent heroism of the man who slowly dies in year-long torment,
helpless himself and steady drain on everyone about him, virtuously
refusing to shorten his torments--and theirs.

What is a controversy? A discussion, surely. It has two sides.

Why isn't a story upholding one side of a controversy as controversial
as a story upholding the other side?

Is it only a coincidence that magazines of large circulation and
established reputation so consistently maintain that side of the
controversy already popularly held as right?

Time passes. Minds develop. New knowledge comes. People's ideas and
feelings change--some people's. These new ideas and feelings seek
expression ion the natural forms--speech and literature, as is
legitimate and right.

But the canons of taste and judgement say No.

The ideas and feelings of the peoples of past times found expression in
this way, and are preserved in literature. But our ideas and feelings,
so seeking expression, do not make literature.

It is not the first time that the canons were wrong. Straight down the
road of historic progress, from the dim old days we can hardly see, into
the increasing glare of the calcium-lighted present, there have always
stood the Priesthood of the Past, making human progress into an obstacle
race.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

QUERY: "I am a woman of about forty; my children are pretty well grown
up; my home does not take all my time. I could do some work in the
world, but I do not know what to do. Can you advise me?"

QUERY: "I appreciate the need of women's working, and am free to do so,
but cannot make up my mind what work to undertake. It is very easy for
you people with 'a mission' and talents, but what is an ordinary woman
to do?"

ANSWER: These two questions belong together, and may be answered
together. Neither of the questioners seem to be driven by necessity,
which simplifies matters a good deal.

Work has to be done for two real reasons. One is the service of
humanity, of society, which cannot exist without our functional
activity. Work is social service.

The other is personal development. One cannot be fully human without
this functional social activity.

In choosing work, there are two governing factors always, and generally
the third one of pressing necessity. Of the two, one is personal
fitness--the instinctive choice of those who are highly specialized in
some one line. This makes decision easy, but does not always make it
easy to get the work. You may be divinely ordained to fiddle--but if no
one wants to hear you, you are badly off. The other is far more
general; it is the social demand--the call of the work that _needs
doing._

If you are able to work, free to work, and not hampered by a rigid
personal bent, just look about and see what other people need. Study
your country, town, village, your environment, near or distant; and take
hold of some social need, whether it is a better school board or the
preservation of our forests. So long as the earth or the people on it
need service, there is work for all of us.

PLAY-TIME

A WALK WALK WALK

I.

I once went out for a walk, walk, walk,
For a walk beside the sea;
And all I carried for to eat, eat, eat,
Was a jar of ginger snaps so sweet,
And a jug of ginger tea.

For I am fond of cinnamon pie,
And peppermint pudding, too;
And I dearly love to bake, bake, bake,
A mighty mass of mustard cake,
And nutmeg beer to brew.

II.

And all I carried for drink, drink, drink,
That long and weary way,
Was a dozen little glasses
Of boiled molasses
On a Cochin China tray.

For I am fond of the sugar of the grape,
And the sugar of the maple tree;
But I always eat
The sugar of the beet
When I'm in company.

III.

And all I carried for to read, read, read,
For a half an hour or so,
Was Milman's Rome, and Grote on Greece,
And the works of Dumas, pere et fils,
And the poems of Longfellow.

For I am fond of the Hunting of the Snark,
And the Romaunt of the Rose;
And I never go to bed
Without Webster at my head
And Worcester at my toes.

ODE TO A FOOL

"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his
folly."--Prov. 17th, 12th.

Singular insect! Here I watch thee spin
Upon my pin;
And know that thou hast not the least idea
I have thee here.
Strange is thy nature! For thou mayst be slain
Once and again;
Dismembered, tortured, torn with tortures hot--
Yet know it not!
As well pour hate and scorn upon the dead
As on thy head.
While I discuss thee here I plainly see
Thee sneer at me.

Marvellous creature! What mysterious power
In idle hour
Arranged the mighty elements whence came
Thy iron frame!
In every item of thy outward plan
So like a man!
But men are mortal, dying every day,
And thou dost stay.
The nations rise and die with passing rule,
But thou, O Fool!
Livedst when drunken Noah asleeping lay,
Livest to-day.

Invulnerable Fool! Thy mind
Is deaf and blind;
Impervious to sense of taste and smell
And touch as well.
Thought from without may vainly seek to press
Thy consciousness;
Man's hard-won knowledge which the ages pile
But makes thee smile;
Thy vast sagacity and blatant din
Come from within;
Thy voice doth fill the world from year to year,
Helpless we hear.

Wisdom and wit 'gainst thee have no avail;
O Fool--All Hail!

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 5
MARCH, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

How many a useless stone we find
Swallowed in that capacious, blind,
Faith-swollen gullet, our ancestral mind!

THE SANDS

It runs--it runs--the hourglass turning;
Dark sands glooming, bright sands burning;
I turn--and turn--with heavy or hopeful hands;
So must I turn as long as the Voice commands;
But I lose all count of the hours for watching the sliding sands.

Or fast--or slow--it ceases turning;
Ceases the flow, or bright or burning--
"What have you done with the hours?" the Voice demands.
What can I say of eager or careless hands?--
I had forgotten the hours in watching the sliding sands.

A MIDDLE-SIZED ARTIST

When Rosamond's brown eyes seemed almost too big for her brilliant
little face, and her brown curls danced on her shoulders, she had a
passionate enthusiasm for picture books. She loved "the reading," but
when the picture made what her young mind was trying to grasp suddenly
real before her, the stimulus reaching the brain from two directions at
once, she used to laugh with delight and hug the book.

The vague new words describing things she never saw suggested "castle,"
a thing of gloom and beauty; and then upon the page came The Castle
itself, looming dim and huge before her, with drooping heavy banners
against the sunset calm.

How she had regretted it, scarce knowing why, when the pictures were
less real than the description; when the princess, whose beauty made her
the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible
form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden
Locks in the other book! And what an outcry she made to her indifferent
family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an
illustration that differed from the text!

"But, Mother--see!" she cried. "It says, 'Her beauty was crowned by
rich braids of golden hair, wound thrice around her shapely head,' and
this girl has black hair--in curls! Did the man forget what he just
said?"

Her mother didn't seem to care at all. "They often get them wrong," she
said. "Perhaps it was an old plate. Run away, dear, Mama is very
busy."

But Rosamond cared.

She asked her father more particularly about this mysterious "old
plate," and he, being a publisher, was able to give her much information
thereanent. She learned that these wonderful reinforcements of her
adored stories did not emanate direct from the brain of the beneficent
author, but were a supplementary product by some draughtsman, who cared
far less for what was in the author's mind than for what was in his own;
who was sometimes lazy, sometimes arrogant, sometimes incompetent;
sometimes all three. That to find a real artist, who could make
pictures and was willing to make them like the picture the author saw,
was very unusual.

"You see, little girl," said Papa, "the big artists are too big to do
it--they'd rather make their own pictures; and the little artists are
too little--they can't make real ones of their own ideas, nor yet of
another's."

"Aren't there any middle-sized artists?" asked the child.

"Sometimes," said her father; and then he showed her some of the perfect
illustrations which leave nothing to be desired, as the familiar ones by
Teniel and Henry Holiday, which make Alice's Adventures and the Hunting
of the Snark so doubly dear, Dore and Retsch and Tony Johannot and
others.

"When I grow up," said Rosamond decidedly, "I'm going to be a
middle-sized artist!"

Fortunately for her aspirations the line of study required was in no way
different at first from that of general education. Her parents
explained that a good illustrator ought to know pretty much everything.
So she obediently went through school and college, and when the time
came for real work at her drawing there was no objection to that.

"It is pretty work," said her mother, "a beautiful accomplishment. It
will always be a resource for her."

"A girl is better off to have an interest," said her father, "and not
marry the first fool that asks her. When she does fall in love this
won't stand in the way; it never does; with a woman. Besides--she may
need it sometime."

So her father helped and her mother did not hinder, and when the brown
eyes were less disproportionate and the brown curls wreathed high upon
her small fine head, she found herself at twenty-one more determined to
be a middle-sized artist than she was at ten.

Then love came; in the person of one of her father's readers; a
strenuous new-fledged college graduate; big, handsome, domineering,
opinionative; who was accepting a salary of four dollars a week for the
privilege of working in a publishing house, because he loved books and
meant to write them some day.

They saw a good deal of each other, and were pleasantly congenial. She
sympathized with his criticisms of modem fiction; he sympathized with
her criticisms of modern illustration; and her young imagination began
to stir with sweet memories of poetry and romance; and sweet hopes of
beautiful reality.

There are cases where the longest way round is the shortest way home;
but Mr. Allen G. Goddard chose differently. He had read much about
women and about love, beginning with a full foundation from the
ancients; but lacked an understanding of the modern woman, such as he
had to deal with.

Therefore, finding her evidently favorable, his theories and
inclinations suiting, he made hot love to her, breathing, "My Wife!"
into her ear before she had scarce dared to think "my darling!" and
suddenly wrapping her in his arms with hot kisses, while she was still
musing on "The Hugenot Lovers" and the kisses she dared dream of came in
slow gradation as in the Sonnets From the Portuguese.

He was in desperate earnest. "O you are so beautiful!" he cried. "So
unbelievably beautiful! Come to me, my Sweet!" for she had sprung away
and stood panting and looking at him, half reproachful, half angry.

"You love me, Dearest! You cannot deny it!" he cried. "And I love
you--Ah! You shall know!"

He was single-hearted, sincere; stirred by a very genuine overwhelming
emotion. She on the contrary was moved by many emotions at once;--a
pleasure she was half ashamed of; a disappointment she could not clearly
define; as if some one had told her the whole plot of a promising new
novel; a sense of fear of the new hopes she had been holding, and of
startled loyalty to her long-held purposes.

"Stop!" she said--for he evidently mistook her agitation, and thought
her silence was consent. "I suppose I do--love you--a little; but
you've no right to kiss me like that!"

His eyes shone. "You Darling! _My_ Darling!" he said. "You will give
me the right, won't you? Now, Dearest--see! I am waiting!" And he held
out his arms to her.

But Rosamond was more and more displeased. "You will have to wait. I'm
sorry; but I'm not ready to be engaged, yet! You know my plans. Why
I'm going to Paris this year! I'm going to work! It will be ever so
long before I'm ready to--to settle down."

"As to that," he said more calmly, "I cannot of course offer immediate
marriage, but we can wait for that--together! You surely will not leave
me--if you love me!"

"I think I love you," she said conscientiously, "at least I did think
so. You've upset it all, somehow--you hurry me so!--no--I can't bind
myself yet."

"Do you tell me to wait for you?" he asked; his deep voice still strong
to touch her heart. "How long, Dearest?"

"I'm not asking you to wait for me--I don't want to promise
anything--nor to have you. But when I have made a place--am really
doing something--perhaps then--"

He laughed harshly. "Do not deceive yourself, child, nor me! If you
loved me there would be none of this poor wish for freedom--for a
career. You don't love me--that's all!"

He waited for her to deny this. She said nothing. He did not know how
hard it was for her to keep from crying--and from running to his arms.

"Very well," said he. "Goodby!"--And he was gone.

All that happened three years ago.

Allen Goddard took it very hard; and added to his earlier ideas about
women another, that "the new woman" was a selfish heartless creature,
indifferent to her own true nature.

He had to stay where he was and work, owing to the pressure of
circumstances, which made it harder; so he became something of a
mysogynyst; which is not a bad thing when a young man has to live on
very little and build a place for himself.

In spite of this cynicism he could not remove from his mind those softly
brilliant dark eyes; the earnest thoughtful lines of the pure young
face; and the changing lights and shadows in that silky hair. Also, in
the course of his work, he was continually reminded of her; for her
characteristic drawings appeared more and frequently in the magazines,
and grew better, stronger, more convincing from year to year.

Stories of adventure she illustrated admirably; children's stories to
perfection; fairy stories--she was the delight of thousands of children,
who never once thought that the tiny quaint rose in a circle that was to
be found in all those charming pictures meant a name. But he noticed
that she never illustrated love stories; and smiled bitterly, to
himself.

And Rosamond?

There were moments when she was inclined to forfeit her passage money
and throw herself unreservedly into those strong arms which had held her
so tightly for a little while. But a bud picked open does not bloom
naturally; and her tumultuous feelings were thoroughly dissipated by a
long strong attack of _mal de mer._ She derived two advantages from her
experience: one a period of safe indifference to all advances from eager
fellow students and more cautious older admirers; the other a facility
she had not before aspired to in the making of pictures of love and
lovers.

She made pictures of him from memory--so good, so moving, that she put
them religiously away in a portfolio by themselves; and only took them
out--sometimes. She illustrated, solely for her own enjoyment some of
her girlhood's best loved poems and stories. "The Rhyme of the Duchess
May," "The Letter L," "In a Balcony," "In a Gondola." And hid them from
herself even--they rather frightened her.

After three years of work abroad she came home with an established
reputation, plenty of orders, and an interest that would not be stifled
in the present state of mind of Mr. Allen Goddard.

She found him still at work, promoted to fifteen dollars a week by this
time, and adding to his income by writing political and statistical
articles for the magazines. He talked, when they met, of this work,
with little enthusiasm, and asked her politely about hers.

"Anybody can see mine!" she told him lightly. "And judge it easily."

"Mine too," he answered. "It to-day is--and to-morrow is cast into the
waste-basket. He who runs may read--if he runs fast enough."

He told himself he was glad he was not bound to this hard, bright
creature, so unnaturally self-sufficient, and successful.

She told herself that he had never cared for her, really, that was
evident.

Then an English publisher who liked her work sent her a new novel by a
new writer, "A. Gage." "I know this is out of your usual line," he
said, "but I want a woman to do it, and I want you to be the woman, if
possible. Read it and see what you think. Any terms you like."

The novel was called "Two and One;" and she began it with languid
interest, because she liked that publisher and wished to give full
reasons for refusing. It opened with two young people who were much in
love with one another; the girl a talented young sculptor with a vivid
desire for fame; and another girl, a cousin of the man, ordinary enough,
but pretty and sweet, and with no desires save those of romance and
domesticity. The first couple broke off a happy engagement because she
insisted on studying in Paris, and her lover, who could neither go with
her, nor immediately marry her, naturally objected.

Rosamond sat up in bed; pulled a shawl round her, swung the electric
light nearer, and went on.

The man was broken-hearted; he suffered tortures of loneliness,
disappointment, doubt, self-depreciation. He waited, held at his work
by a dependent widowed mother; hoping against hope that his lost one
would come back. The girl meanwhile made good in her art work; she was
not a great sculptor but a popular portraitist and maker of little genre
groups. She had other offers, but refused them, being hardened in her
ambitions, and, possibly, still withheld by her early love.

The man after two or three years of empty misery and hard grinding work,
falls desperately ill; the pretty cousin helps the mother nurse him, and
shows her own affection. He offers the broken remnants of his heart,
which she eagerly undertakes to patch up; and they become tolerably
happy, at least she is.

But the young sculptor in Paris! Rosamond hurried through the pages to
the last chapter. There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her
studio. She had been given a medal--she had plenty of orders--she had
just refused a Count. Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine
studio, self-satisfied and triumphant.

Then she picks up an old American paper which was lying about; reads it
idly as she smokes her cigarette--and then both paper and cigarette drop
to the floor, and she sits staring.

Then she starts up--her arms out--vainly. "Wait! O Wait!" she
cries--"I was coining back,"--and drops into her chair again. The fire
is out. She is alone.

Rosamond shut the book and leaned back upon her pillow. Her eyes were
shut tight; but a little gleaming line showed on either cheek under the
near light. She put the light out and lay quite still.

*

Allen G. Goddard, in his capacity as "reader" was looking over some
popular English novels which his firm wished to arrange about publishing
in America. He left "Two and One" to the last. It was the second
edition, the illustrated one which he had not seen yet; the first he had
read before. He regarded it from time to time with a peculiar
expression.

"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose I can stand it if the others do."
And he opened the book.

The drawing was strong work certainly, in a style he did not know. They
were striking pictures, vivid, real, carrying out in last detail the
descriptions given, and the very spirit of the book, showing it more
perfectly than the words. There was the tender happiness of the lovers,
the courage, the firmness, the fixed purpose in the young sculptor
insisting on her freedom, and the gay pride of the successful artist in
her work.

There was beauty and charm in this character, yet the face was always
turned away, and there was a haunting suggestion of familiarity in the
figure. The other girl was beautiful, and docile in expression;
well-dressed and graceful; yet somehow unattractive, even at her best,
as nurse; and the man was extremely well drawn, both in his happy ardor
as a lover, and his grinding misery when rejected. He was very
good-looking; and here too was this strong sense of resemblance.

"Why he looks like _me_!" suddenly cried the reader--springing to his
feet. "Confound his impudence!" he cried. "How in thunder!" Then he
looked at the picture again, more carefully, a growing suspicion in his
face; and turned hurriedly to the title page,--seeing a name unknown to
him.

This subtle, powerful convincing work; this man who undeniably suggested
him; this girl whose eyes he could not see; he turned from one to
another and hurried to the back of the book.

"The fire was out--she was alone." And there, in the remorseless light
of a big lamp before her fireless hearth, the crumpled newspaper beside
her, and all hope gone from a limp, crouching little figure, sat--why,
he would know her among a thousand--even if her face was buried in her
hands, and sunk on the arm of the chair--it was Rosamond!

*

She was in her little downtown room and hard at work when he entered;
but she had time to conceal a new book quickly.

He came straight to her; he had a book in his hand, open--he held it
out.

"Did you do this?" he demanded. "Tell me--tell me!" His voice was very
unreliable.

She lifted her eyes slowly to his; large, soft, full of dancing lights,
and the rich color swept to the gold-lighted borders of her hair.

"Did you?" she asked.

He was taken aback. "I!" said he. "Why it's by--" he showed her the
title-page. "By A. Gage," he read.

"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Illustrated by A. N. Other.'"

"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously. "Real work--great work. I
always knew you'd do it, Allen. I'm so proud of you!" And she held out
her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.

He took it, still bewildered.

"Thank you," he said. "I value your opinion--honestly I do! And--with
a sudden sweep of recognition. "And yours is great work! Superb! Why
you've put more into that story than I knew was there! You make the
thing live and breathe! You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely
ruffian there that I was too proud to admit! And you've shown
the--unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously. But see
here--no more fooling!"

He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and
forced her to look at him. "Tell me about that last picture! Is
it--true?"

Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for. "It is true," she said.

*

After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it,
he suddenly burst forth. "But how did you _know_?"

She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the title page
again.

"'A. Gage.'--You threw it down."

"And you--" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You threw
down A-N-Other! O you witch! You immeasurably clever darling! How
well our work fits. By Jove! What good times we'll have!"

And they did.

THE MINOR BIRDS

Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?
Must all the lesser voices cease?
Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?
The woods wait dumb
Until he come?

Must we forego the voices of the field?
The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing,
All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing,
Where each reveals
What joy he feels?

Should we know how to praise the nightingale,
Master of music, ecstacy and pain,
If he alone sang in the springtime rain?
If no one heard
A minor bird?

PARLOR-MINDEDNESS

"Won't you step in?"

You step in.

"She will be down in a moment. Won't you sit down?"

You sit down. You wait. You are in the parlor.

What is this room? What is it for?

It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home. Not to eat in, the
second. Not to shelter young in, the third. Not to cook and wash in,
to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades
which we still practice in the home.

It is a place for social intercourse. If the family is sufficiently
intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and
decorum, for rest and pleasure. Whether the family is of that order or
not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of
visitors. Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery
or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with
each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A
room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and
conversation; the reception room for visitors." It is, as the
derivation declares, "a talking room."

While you wait in the parlor you study it.

It is the best room. It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the
pictures and decorations considered most worthy. It is adorned as a
shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a noble
purpose--to promote social intercourse.

In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and
essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided.
Are they all the vehicles provided? Is it in parlors that the sea of
human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas
are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in
parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new
lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?

If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein
what would you hear? When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with
effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the
interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?

Alas and alas! It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the
dressmaker's shop. It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily
concerns of the speakers.

Are there no men then in the parlors? Yes, frequently. The man of the
house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their
wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these
cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation
to their lines of work and thought. When men talk with men it is not in
parlors. The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or
they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking
glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they
have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.

When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do
not seek the parlor. The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some
public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground.
For the parlor is the women's meeting ground--has been for long their
only meeting ground except the church steps.

Its limits are sharp and clear. Only suitable persons may enter the
parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends. Thus the social
intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor
limits; they have conversed only with their own class and kind, forever
rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common
trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there
within prescribed lines.

It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow,
enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking
continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and
which the parlor so meagerly provides. As we see the fakir;

"Eating with famished patience grain by grain,
A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"--

So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can--neither giving
nor getting what is needed.

When we find an institution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant
influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners,
a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive
pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that
institution and in especial its effect upon the mind.

First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of
personality.

In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a
woman's hand." It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies
of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise
one another's display.

When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and
slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the
blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors.
But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnishings,
are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife. Such as it is, provided
through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse,
this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.

"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception
chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,--these and the "best dress" to
go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic
influences.

Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the
parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.

Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of
one's "social acquaintances." As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him
falsehood. Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest
against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial
greeting. The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the
undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance
of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable
repetition--all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed
to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing
house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after
health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and
servants,--these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor
talk.

The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they
seek to perpetuate. The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a
vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use,
not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all
these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.

So interwoven with our inner consciousness are these purely arbitrary
codes of propriety in costume, that we have such extremes as Kipling
shows us in his remote Himalayan forests,--a white man thousands of
miles from his kind, who "dressed for dinner every night to preserve his
self-respect." No doubt a perfectly sincere conviction, and one sunk
deep in the highbred British breast, but even so of a most shallow and
ephemeral nature, based on nothing whatever but a temporary caprice of
our parlor-mindedness.

Being reared in that state of mind, and half of us confined to it
professionally, we are inevitably affected thereby, and react upon
life--the real moving world-life, under its pitiful limitations.

If one's sense of beauty must be first, last and always personal, and
confined to one's parlor,--for of course we cannot dictate as to other
women's parlors,--then how is it to be expected that we should in any
way notice, feel or see the ugliness of our town or city, schoolhouse or
street-car?

See the woman who has had "an education," who has even "studied art,"
perhaps, and whose husband can pay for what she wants. Her parlor may
become a drawing-room, or two, or more, but she does not grow to care
that a public school-room is decorated in white plaster trimmed with a
broad strip of blackboard.

The bald, cruel, wearing ugliness of the most of our schools, is worthy
of penal institutions, yet we with cheerful unconcern submit growing
children to such influences without ever giving it a thought.

"My parlor" must be beautiful, but "our school" is no business of mine.
Is there any real reason, by the way, why blackboards must be black? A
deep dull red or somber green would be restful and pleasant to the eye,
and show chalk just as well. As is being now slowly discovered. There
are no blackboards in our parlors. Our children leave home to go to
school, and their mother's thoughts do not. In the small measure of
parlor decoration grows no sense of public art.

Great art must be largely conceived, largely executed. For the temple
and palace and forum rose the columns and statues of the past; for the
church and castle the "frozen music" of mediaeval architecture; for
church and palace again, the blazing outburst of pictorial art in the
great re-birth. Now the struggling artist must cater to the tastes of
parlor-bred patrons; must paint what suits the uses of that carpeted
sanctuary, portraits of young ladies most successful! Or he must do for
public buildings, if by chance he gets the opportunity, what meets the
tastes of our universal parlor-mindedness.

With this parlor-mindedness, we repudiate and condemn in painting,
literature, music, drama and the dance, whatever does not conform to the
decorum of this shrine, whatsoever is not suitable to ladylike
conversation. Be the book bad, it is unsuited to the parlor table. Be
the book good--too good, or be it great, then it is equally unsuited.
Controversy has no place in parlors, hence no controversial literature.
Pleasant if possible, or sweetly sad, and not provocative of
argument--this is the demeanor of the parlor table, and to this the
editor conforms. To the editorial dictum the "reader" must submit; to
the "readers" decisions the writer must submit; to the _menu_ furnished
by the magazines, the public must submit, and so grows up among us a
canon of literary judgment, best described as "parlor-minded." This is
by no means so damaging as kitchen-mindedness, for those who escape the
influence of the parlor are many, and those who escape the influence of
the kitchen are few; but it is quite damaging enough.

One of the main elements of beauty in our lives is the human body. Some
keep swans, some peacocks, and some deer, that they may delight their
eyes with the beauty thereof. We ourselves are more beautiful than any
beast or bird, we are the inspiration of poet, painter, and sculptor;
yet we have deliberately foregone all this constant world of beauty and
substituted for it a fluctuating nightmare.

In what sordid or discordant colors do we move about! What desolate
blurring of outline and action, by our dragging masses of cloth,
stiffened and padded like Chinese armor! What strange figures,
conventionalized as a lotus pattern, instead of the moving glory of the
human form!

Why do we do it? Having done it why do we bear it longer? Why not fill
our streets with beauty, gladden our eyes and uplift our souls with the
loveliness that is ours by nature, plus the added loveliness of the
textile art? We have pictures of our beauty, we have statues of our
beauty--why go without the real thing? Suppose our swans could show us
in paint and marble the slow white grace of their plumed sailing, but in
person paddled about in a costume of stovepipes. Suppose deer and
hound,--but wait!--this we have seen, this extreme of human folly forced
upon the helpless beast,--dogs dressed to suit the taste of their
parlor-minded owners! Not men's dogs,--women's dogs.

To cover--at any cost, with anything, that is a major ideal of the
parlor. There is an exception made, when, at any cost of health, beauty
and decency, we uncover--but this too, is to meet one of the parlor
purposes. In it and its larger spread of drawing and assembly rooms, we
provide not only for "social intercourse"--but for that necessary
meeting of men and women that shall lead to marriage.

A right and wholesome purpose, but not a right and wholesome place. Men
and women should meet and meet freely in the places where they live, but
they should not live in parlors. They should meet and know one another
in their working clothes, in the actual character and habit of their
daily lives.

Marriages may be "made in heaven," but they are mainly--shall we say
"retailed"? in parlors. What can the parlor-loved young woman know of
the parlor-bound young man? Parlor manners only are produced, parlor
topics, parlor ideas. He had better court her in the kitchen, if she is
one of the "fifteen sixteenths" of our families who keep no servants, to
know what he is going to live with. She never knows what she is going
to live with; for the nature of man is not truly exhibited either in
kitchen or parlor. A co-educational college does much, a studio or
business office or work-shop does more, to show men and women to each
other as they are. Neither does enough, for the blurring shadow of our
parlor-mindedness still lies between. It has so habituated us to the
soft wavelets and glassy shallows of polite conversation, that we refuse
to face and discuss the realities of life. With gifts of roses and
bonbons, suppers and theatres that cost more than the cows of the Kaffir
lover, and ought to make the girl feel like a Kaffir bride, the man woos
the woman. With elaborate toilettes and all the delicate trickery of
her unnatural craft, the woman woos the man. And the trail of the
parlor is over it all.

Gaily to the gate of marriage they go, and through it--and never have
they asked or answered the questions on which the whole truth of their
union depends. Our standards of decorum forbid,--parlor standards all.
We have woven and embroidered a veil over the facts of life; an
incense-clouded atmosphere blinds us; low music and murmured litanies
dull the mind, but not the senses. We drift and dream. In the girl's
mind floats a cloud of literary ideals. He is like a "Greek god," a
"Galahad," a "Knight of old." He is in some mystic way a Hero, a
Master, a Protector. She pictures herself as fulfilling exquisite
ideals of wifely devotion, "all in all" to him, and he to her.

She does not once prefigure to herself the plain common facts of the
experience that lies before her. She does not known them. In parlors
such things are not discussed,--no naked truths can be admitted there.

We live a marvellous life at home. Visibly we have the care and labor
of housekeeping, the strain and anxiety of childbearing as it is
practised, the elaborate convention of "receiving" and "entertaining."
Under these goes on life. Our bodies are tired, overtaxed, ill-fed,
grossly ill-treated. Our minds are hungry, unsatisfied, or drugged and
calm. We live, we suffer and we die,--and never once do we face the
facts. Birth and death are salient enough, one would think, but birth
and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends
with conventional phrases, lying about to our children. Over the strong
ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother
them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic for the parlor to
recognize.

In older nations than ours, we can see this web of convention thickened
and hardened till life runs low within. Think what can be the state of
mind in India which allows child-marriage--the mother concurrent! Think
of the slow torture of little girls in foot-bound China, the mother
concurrent! Then turning quickly, think of our own state of mind, which
allows young girls to marry old reprobates,--the mother concurrent!

That mental attitude which maintains ancient conventions, which prefers
symbol to fact, which prescribes limits to our conversation, and draws
them narrowly down to what can be understood by anybody, and can
instruct, interest and inspire nobody, is parlor-mindedness. It does
harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and
morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more
harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most
in its failure to promote the one thing it is for--social intercourse.

To meet freely; to talk, discuss, exchange and compare ideas, is a
general human need. Those who do not know they need it, need it most.

Each of us alone, taps the reservoir of world-force, in some degree, and
pours it forth in some expression. Often the intake seems to fail, the
output is unsatisfying. Then we need one another, now this one and now
that one, now several, now a crowd. In combination we receive new
power. The human soul calls for contact and exchange with its kind.
This contact should be fluent and free, spontaneous, natural; that we
may go as we are drawn to those who feed us best.

Men need men and women women; men and women need one another; it is a
general human condition. From such natural meeting arises personal
relief, rest, pleasure, stimulus, and social gain beyond counting, in
the growth of thought. The social battery is continually replenished by
contact and exchange. Some friends draw out the best that is in us,
some, though perhaps near and dear to us, do not.

No matter how "happily married," or how unhappily unmarried, we need
social interchange. To quench this thirst, to meet this need, wide as
the world and deep as life, we provide--the parlor.

Is it any wonder that our talk is mainly personality? That we love
gossip, even when it bites and sours to scandal? Is it any wonder that
women talk so much of their kitchen and nurseries, of their diseases,
and their clothes, yet learn so little about better feeding, better
dressing, better health and better child-culture? Is it any wonder that
to our parlor-mindedness the daily press descends, gives us the pap we
are used to, and then artfully peppers our pap, insinuating some sparkle
of alcohol, some solace of insidious drug, that we may "get the habit"
more firmly? Is it any wonder that we, parlor-bred and newspaper-fed,
continue to cry out fiercely against personal, primitive, parlor sins,
and remain calm and unshocked by world-sins that should rouse us to
horror, shame and action?

In these small shrines, adorned with what, in our doll-house taste, we
fondly imagine to be beautiful, we seek to keep ourselves, "unspotted
from the world," but by no saving grace of a thousand parlors, do we
succeed in keeping the world unspotted from ourselves! We make the
world. We are the world. It might be a place of noble freedom, of
ever-growing beauty, of a fluent, truthful radiant art, of broadening
education, wide peace and culture, universal wealth and progress. And
we miss even seeing this, living sedately, curtained, carpeted, well
content, in our ancestral parlor-mindedness.

NAUGHTY

The young brain was awake and hungry. It was a vigorous young brain,
well-organized; eager, receiving impressions with keen joy and storing
them rapidly away in due relation.

Such a wonder world!

Sweetness and light were the first impressions--light which made his
eyes laugh; and Sweetness Incarnate--that great soft Presence which was
Food and Warmth and Rest and Comfort and something better still; for all
of which he had no name as yet except "Ma-ma!"

He was growing, growing fast. He was satisfied with food. He was
satisfied with sleep. But his brain was not satisfied. So the brain's
first servant went forth to minister to it; small, soft, uncertain,
searching for all knowledge--the little hand.

Something to hold! Ancestral reflexes awoke as the fingers closed upon
it. Something to pull! The soft arm flexors tightened with a sense of
pleasure. Sensations came flowing to the hungry brain--welcomed
eagerly.

Then suddenly, a new sensation--Pain! He drew back his hand as a
touched anemone draws in its tentacles, scarce softer than those pink
fingers; but he did not know quite where the pain was--much less where
it came from, or what it meant.

"More!" said the hungry brain. "More!" and the little hand went out
again.

It was sharply spatted. "No, No!" said a strange voice--he had never
heard that kind of tone before. "No! No! Naughty! Don't touch!" He
lifted his face unbelievingly. Yes--it was Food and Warmth and Comfort
who was doing this to him.

The small moist mouth quivered grievingly--a cry rose in him.

"Here!" said the Presence, and gave him a rattle.

He had had that before. He knew all that it could do. He dropped it.

Over and over again, day after day, the little servant of the brain ran
forth to minister, and met sharp pain; while the dim new concept
"'Naughty'--something you want to do and mustn't"--was registered
within.

The child grew and his brain grew faster. He learned new words, an
behind the words, in the fresh untouched spaces, the swift brain placed
ideas--according to its lights. He had learned that the Presence
varied. It was not always Sweetness and Rest and Joy--sometimes it was
Discomfort--Hindrance--even Pain. He had learned to look at it with
doubt--when about to do something--to see which way it would react upon
him.

"Isn't that baby cute?" said the Presence. "He knows just as well!"

But his brain grew stronger, and his hand grew stronger, and about him
was a world of objects, rousing all manner of sensations which he fain
would learn.

"I have to watch that child every minute to keep him out of mischief!"
said the Presence.

She caught him sharply by the arm and drew him back.

"Don't touch that again! If you do I'll whip you!"

He stared at her, large-eyed, revolving the language. Language was so
interesting. "Don't" he knew well, and "touch" and "that" and "again."
"If you do" was harder. He was not at all sure about "if." And
"whip"--that was quite new. He puckered his soft mouth and made a
little whispering sound, trying to say it.

"Yes, Whip!" said the Presence. "Now you be good!" He knew "be good,"
too. It meant not doing anything. He couldn't be good very long--any
more than the Proverbial Indian.

In the course of his growing he soon learned "Whip." It was very
unpleasant. The busy brain, receiving, sorting, arranging,
re-arranging, stored up this fierce experience without delay.
"Whipping--Pain and Insult. It happens when you break anything. It is
a Consequence."

The brain was kept very busy re-arranging this Consequence. "It happens
when you spill the milk--when you soil your dress--when you tear it
(dresses must be sacred!)--when you 'meddle'--when you run away--when
you get wet--when you take sugar--when"--(this was a great discovery),
"when Mama is Angry." He was older now, and found that the Presence
varied a good deal. So the brain built up its group of ethical
impressions.

And then--one memorable day--this neat arrangement of ethics, true,
received a great shock.

There was the sugar--in easy reach--and sugar is All Good to the young
body. Remembered pleasure, strong immediate desire, the eye's guidance,
the hand's impulse--all urged to perform the natural act of eating.
Against it,--what? The blurred remembrance of promiscuous pain, only by
main force to be associated with that coveted, visible pleasure; and the
dawning power of inhibition. To check strong natural desire by no
better force than the memory of oral threat, or even of felt pain, is
not easy always for adults.

He ate the sugar, fearing yet joyous. No one else was present. No one
saw the act, nor learned it later.

He was not whipped.

Then rose the strong young brain to new occasion. It observed, deduced,
even experimented, flushed with the pleasure of normal exercise. It
established, before he was five years old, these conclusions:

"'Naughty' is a thing you're punished for doing--if you're not punished
it isn't naughty.

"Punishment is a thing that happens if you're found out--if you're not
found out you're not punished.

"Ergo--if you're not found out you're not naughty!"

And the child grew up to be a man.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER V.

When the fig growns on the thistle,
And the silk purse on the sow;
When one swallow brings the summer,
And blue moons on her brow--

Then we may look for strength and skill,
Experience, good health, good will,
Art and science well combined,
Honest soul and able mind,
Servants built upon this plan,
One to wait on every man,
Patiently from youth to age,--
For less than a street cleaner's wage!

When the parson's gay on Mondays,
When we meet a month of Sundays,
We may look for them and find them--
But Not Now!

When young Mrs. Weatherstone swept her trailing crepe from the
automobile to her friend's door, it was opened by a quick, soft-footed
maid with a pleasant face, who showed her into a parlor, not only cool
and flower-lit, but having that fresh smell that tells of new-washed
floors.

Mrs. Porne came flying down to meet her, with such a look of rest and
comfort as roused instant notice.

"Why, Belle! I haven't seen you look so bright in ever so long. It
must be the new maid!"

"That's it--she's 'Bell' too--'Miss Bell' if you please!"

The visitor looked puzzled. "Is she a--a friend?" she ventured, not
sure of her ground.

"I should say she was! A friend in need! Sit here by the window,
Viva--and I'll tell you all about it--as far as it goes."

She gaily recounted her climax of confusion and weariness, and the
sudden appearance of this ministering angel. "She arrived at about
quarter of ten. I engaged her inside of five minutes. She was into a
gingham gown and at work by ten o'clock!"

"What promptness! And I suppose there was plenty to do!"

Mrs. Porne laughed unblushingly. "There was enough for ten women it
seemed to me! Let's see--it's about five now--seven hours. We have
nine rooms, besides the halls and stairs, and my shop. She hasn't
touched that yet. But the house is clean--_clean_! Smell it!"

She took her guest out into the hall, through the library and
dining-room, upstairs where the pleasant bedrooms stretched open and
orderly.

"She said that if I didn't mind she'd give it a superficial general
cleaning today and be more thorough later!"

Mrs. Weatherstone looked about her with a rather languid interest. "I'm
very glad for you, Belle, dear--but--what an endless nuisance it all
is--don't you think so?"

"Nuisance! It's slow death! to me at least," Mrs. Porne answered. "But
I don't see why you should mind. I thought Madam Weatherstone ran
that--palace, of yours, and you didn't have any trouble at all."

"Oh yes, she runs it. I couldn't get along with her at all if she
didn't. That's her life. It was my mother's too. Always fussing and
fussing. Their houses on their backs--like snails!"

"Don't see why, with ten (or is it fifteen?) servants."

"Its twenty, I think. But my dear Belle, if you imagine that when you
have twenty servants you have neither work nor care--come and try it
awhile, that's all!"

"Not for a millionaire baby's ransom!" answered Isabel promptly.

"Give me my drawing tools and plans and I'm happy--but this
business"--she swept a white hand wearily about--"it's not my work,
that's all."

"But you _enjoy_ it, don't you--I mean having nice things?" asked her
friend.

"Of course I enjoy it, but so does Edgar. Can't a woman enjoy her home,
just as a man does, without running the shop? I enjoy ocean travel, but
I don't want to be either a captain or a common sailor!"

Mrs. Weatherstone smiled, a little sadly. "You're lucky, you have other
interests," she said. "How about our bungalow? have you got any
farther?"

Mrs. Porne flushed. "I'm sorry, Viva. You ought to have given it to
someone else. I haven't gone into that workroom for eight solid days.
No help, and the baby, you know. And I was always dog-tired."

"That's all right, dear, there's no very great rush. You can get at it
now, can't you--with this other Belle to the fore?"

"She's not Belle, bless you--she's 'Miss Bell.' It's her last name."

Mrs. Weatherstone smiled her faint smile. "Well--why not? Like a
seamstress, I suppose."

"Exactly. That's what she said. "If this labor was as important as
that of seamstress or governess why not the same courtesy--Oh she's a
most superior _and_ opinionated young person, I can see that."

"I like her looks," admitted Mrs. Weatherstone, "but can't we look over
those plans again; there's something I wanted to suggest." And they
went up to the big room on the third floor.

In her shop and at her work Isabel Porne was a different woman. She was
eager and yet calm; full of ideas and ideals, yet with a practical
knowledge of details that made her houses dear to the souls of women.

She pointed out in the new drawings the practical advantages of kitchen
and pantry; the simple but thorough ventilation, the deep closets, till
her friend fairly laughed at her. "And you say you're not domestic!"

"I'm a domestic architect, if you like," said Isabel; "but not a
domestic servant.--I'll remember what you say about those windows--it's
a good idea," and she made a careful note of Mrs. Weatherstone's
suggestion.

That lady pushed the plans away from her, and went to the many cushioned
lounge in the wide west window, where she sat so long silent that Isabel
followed at last and took her hand.

"Did you love him so much?" she asked softly.

"Who?" was the surprising answer.

"Why--Mr. Weatherstone," said Mrs. Porne.

"No--not very much. But he was something."

Isabel was puzzled. "I knew you so well in school," she said, "and that
gay year in Paris. You were always a dear, submissive quiet little
thing--but not like this. What's happened Viva?"

"Nothing that anybody can help," said her friend. "Nothing that
matters. What does matter, anyway? Fuss and fuss and fuss. Dress and
entertain. Travel till you're tired, and rest till you're crazy!
Then--when a real thing happens--there's all this!" and she lifted her
black draperies disdainfully. "And mourning notepaper and cards and
servant's livery--and all the things you mustn't do!"

Isabel put an arm around her. "Don't mind, dear--you'll get over
this--you are young enough yet--the world is full of things to do!"

But Mrs. Weatherstone only smiled her faint smile again. "I loved
another man, first," she said. "A real one. He died. He never cared
for me at all. I cared for nothing else--nothing in life. That's why I
married Martin Weatherstone--not for his old millions--but he really
cared--and I was sorry for him. Now he's dead. And I'm wearing
this--and still mourning for the other one."

Isabel held her hand, stroked it softly, laid it against her cheek.

"Oh, I'll feel differently in time, perhaps!" said her visitor.

"Maybe if you took hold of the house--if you ran things
yourself,"--ventured Mrs. Porne.

Mrs. Weatherstone laughed. "And turn out the old lady? You don't know
her. Why she managed her son till he ran away from her--and after he
got so rich and imported her from Philadelphia to rule over Orchardina
in general and his household in particular, she managed that poor little
first wife of his into her grave, and that wretched boy--he's the only
person that manages her! She's utterly spoiled him--that was his
father's constant grief. No, no--let her run the house--she thinks she
owns it."

"She's fond of you, isn't she?" asked Mrs. Porne.

"O I guess so--if I let her have her own way. And she certainly saves
me a great deal of trouble. Speaking of trouble, there they are--she
said she'd stop for me."

At the gate puffed the big car, a person in livery rang the bell, and
Mrs. Weatherstone kissed her friend warmly, and passed like a heavy
shadow along the rose-bordered path. In the tonneau sat a massive old
lady in sober silks, with a set impassive countenance, severely correct
in every feature, and young Mat Weatherstone, sulky because he had to
ride with his grandmother now and then. He was not a nice young man.

*

Diantha found it hard to write her home letters, especially to Ross.
She could not tell them of all she meant to do; and she must tell them
of this part of it, at once, before they heard of it through others.

To leave home--to leave school-teaching, to leave love--and "go out to
service" did not seem a step up, that was certain. But she set her red
lips tighter and wrote the letters; wrote them and mailed them that
evening, tired though she was.

Three letters came back quickly.

Her mother's answer was affectionate, patient, and trustful, though not
understanding.

Her sister's was as unpleasant as she had expected.

"The _idea!_" wrote Mrs. Susie. "A girl with a good home to live in and
another to look forward to--and able to earn money _respectably!_ to go
out and work like a common Irish girl! Why Gerald is so mortified he
can't face his friends--and I'm as ashamed as I can be! My own sister!
You must be _crazy_--simply _crazy!_"

It was hard on them. Diantha had faced her own difficulties bravely
enough; and sympathized keenly with her mother, and with Ross; but she
had not quite visualized the mortification of her relatives. She found
tears in her eyes over her mother's letter. Her sister's made her both
sorry and angry--a most disagreeable feeling--as when you step on the
cat on the stairs. Ross's letter she held some time without opening.

She was in her little upstairs room in the evening. She had swept,
scoured, scalded and carbolized it, and the hospitally smell was now
giving way to the soft richness of the outer air. The "hoo! hoo!" of
the little mourning owl came to her ears through the whispering night,
and large moths beat noiselessly against the window screen. She kissed
the letter again, held it tightly to her heart for a moment, and opened
it.

"Dearest: I have your letter with its--somewhat surprising--news. It is
a comfort to know where you are, that you are settled and in no danger.

"I can readily imagine that this is but the preliminary to something
else, as you say so repeatedly; and I can understand also that you are
too wise to tell me all you mean to be beforehand.

"I will be perfectly frank with you, Dear.

"In the first place I love you. I shall love you always, whatever you
do. But I will not disguise from you that this whole business seems to
me unutterably foolish and wrong.

"I suppose you expect by some mysterious process to "develope" and
"elevate" this housework business; and to make money. I should not love
you any better if you made a million--and I would not take money from
you--you know that, I hope. If in the years we must wait before we can
marry, you are happier away from me--working in strange kitchens--or
offices--that is your affair.

"I shall not argue nor plead with you, Dear Girl; I know you think you
are doing right; and I have no right, nor power, to prevent you. But if
my wish were right and power, you would be here to-night, under the
shadow of the acacia boughs--in my arms!

"Any time you feel like coming back you will be welcome, Dear.

"Yours, Ross."

Any time she felt like coming back?

Diantha slipped down in a little heap by the bed, her face on the
letter--her arms spread wide. The letter grew wetter and wetter, and
her shoulders shook from time to time.

But the hands were tight-clenched, and if you had been near enough you
might have heard a dogged repetition, monotonous as a Tibetan prayer
mill: "It is right. It is right. It is right." And then. "Help
me--please! I need it." Diantha was not "gifted in prayer."

When Mr. Porne came home that night he found the wifely smile which is
supposed to greet all returning husbands quite genuinely in evidence.
"O Edgar!" cried she in a triumphant whisper, "I've got such a nice
girl! She's just as neat and quick; you've no idea the work she's done
today--it looks like another place already. But if things look queer at
dinner don't notice it--for I've just given her her head. I was so
tired, and baby bothered so, and she said that perhaps she could manage
all by herself if I was willing to risk it, so I took baby for a
car-ride and have only just got back. And I _think_ the dinner's going
to be lovely!"

It was lovely. The dining-room was cool and flyless. The table was set
with an assured touch. A few of Orchardina's ever ready roses in a
glass bowl gave an air of intended beauty Mrs. Porne had had no time
for.

The food was well-cooked and well-served, and the attendance showed an
intelligent appreciation of when people want things and how they want
them.

Mrs. Porne quite glowed with exultation, but her husband gently
suggested that the newness of the broom was visibly uppermost, and that
such palpable perfections were probably accompanied by some drawbacks.
But he liked her looks, he admitted, and the cooking would cover a
multitude of sins.

On this they rested, while the week went by. It was a full week, and a
short one. Mrs. Porne, making hay while the sun shone, caught up a
little in her sewing and made some conscience-tormenting calls.

When Thursday night came around she was simply running over with
information to give her husband.

"Such a talk as I have had with Miss Bell! She is so queer! But she's
nice too, and it's all reasonable enough, what she says. You know she's
studied this thing all out, and she knows about it--statistics and
things. I was astonished till I found she used to teach school. Just
think of it! And to be willing to work out! She certainly does her
work beautiful, but--it doesn't seem like having a servant at all. I
feel as if I--boarded with her!"

"Why she seemed to me very modest and unpresuming," put in Mr. Porne.

"O yes, she never presumes. But I mean the capable way she manages--I
don't have to tell her one thing, nor to oversee, nor criticize. I
spoke of it and she said, 'If I didn't understand the business I should
have no right to undertake it."

"That's a new point of view, isn't it?" asked her husband. "Don't they
usually make you teach them their trade and charge for the privilege?"

"Yes, of course they do. But then she does have her disadvantages--as
you said."

"Does she? What are they?"

"Why she's so--rigid. I'll read you her--I don't know what to call it.
She's written out a definite proposition as to her staying with us, and
I want you to study it, it's the queerest thing I ever saw."

The document was somewhat novel. A clear statement of the hours of
labor required in the position, the quality and amount of the different
kinds of work; the terms on which she was willing to undertake it, and
all prefaced by a few remarks on the status of household labor which
made Mr. Porne open his eyes.

Thus Miss Bell; "The ordinary rate for labor in this state, unskilled
labor of the ordinary sort, is $2.00 a day. This is in return for the
simplest exertion of brute force, under constant supervision and
direction, and involving no serious risk to the employer."

"Household labor calls for the practice of several distinct crafts, and,
to be properly done, requires thorough training and experience. Its
performer is not only in a position of confidence, as necessarily
entrusted with the care of the employer's goods and with knowledge of
the most intimate family relations; but the work itself, in maintaining
the life and health of the members of the household, is of most vital
importance.

"In consideration of existing economic conditions, however, I am willing
to undertake these intricate and responsible duties for a seven day week
at less wages than are given the street-digger, for $1.50 a day."

"Good gracious, my dear!" said Mr. Porne, laying down the paper, "This
young woman does appreciate her business! And we're to be let off easy
at $45.00 a month, are we"

"And feel under obligations at that!" answered his wife. "But you read
ahead. It is most instructive. We shall have to ask her to read a
paper for the Club!"

"'In further consideration of the conditions of the time, I am willing
to accept part payment in board and lodging instead of cash. Such
accommodations as are usually offered with this position may be rated at
$17.00 a month."

"O come now, don't we board her any better than that?"

"That's what I thought, and I asked her about it, and she explained that
she could get a room as good for a dollar and a-half a week--she had
actually made inquiries in this very town! And she could; really a
better room, better furnished, that is, and service with it. You know
I've always meant to get the girl's room fixed more prettily, but
usually they don't seem to mind. And as to food--you see she knows all
about the cost of things, and the materials she consumes are really not
more than two dollars and a half a week, if they are that. She even
made some figures for me to prove it--see."

Mr. Porne had to laugh.

"Breakfast. Coffee at thirty-five cents per pound, one cup, one cent.
Oatmeal at fourteen cents per package, one bowl, one cent. Bread at
five cents per loaf, two slices, one-half cent. Butter at forty cents
per pound, one piece, one and a-half cents. Oranges at thirty cents per
dozen, one, three cents. Milk at eight cents per quart, on oatmeal, one
cent. Meat or fish or egg, average five cents. Total--thirteen cents."

"There! And she showed me dinner and lunch the same way. I had no idea
food, just the material, cost so little. It's the labor, she says that
makes it cost even in the cheapest restaurant."

"I see," said Mr. Porne. "And in the case of the domestic servant we
furnish the materials and she furnishes the labor. She cooks her own
food and waits on herself--naturally it wouldn't come high. What does
she make it?"

'Food, average per day . . . $0.35
Room, $1.50 per w'k, ave. per day . . . .22
-----
.57

Total, per month . . . $17.10

$1.50 per day, per month . . . $45.00

"'Remaining payable in cash, $28.00.' Do I still live! But my dear
Ellie, that's only what an ordinary first-class cook charges, out here,
without all this fuss!"

"I know it, Ned, but you know we think it's awful, and we're always
telling about their getting their board and lodging clear--as if we
gave'em that out of the goodness of our hearts!"

"Exactly, my dear. And this amazing and arithmetical young woman makes
us feel as if we were giving her wampum instead of money--mere primitive
barter of ancient days in return for her twentieth century services!
How does she do her work--that's the main question."

"I never saw anyone do it better, or quicker, or easier. That is, I
thought it was easy till she brought me this paper. Just read about her
work, and you'll feel as if we ought to pay her all your salary."

Mr. Porne read:

"Labor performed, average ten hours a day, as follows: Preparation of
food materials, care of fires, cooking, table service, and cleaning of
dishes, utensils, towels, stove, etc., per meal--breakfast two hours,
dinner three hours, supper or lunch one hour--six hours per day for food
service. Daily chamber work and dusting, etc., one and one-half hours
per day. Weekly cleaning for house of nine rooms, with halls, stairs,
closets, porches, steps, walks, etc., sweeping, dusting, washing
windows, mopping, scouring, etc., averaging two hours per day. Door
service, waiting on tradesmen, and extras one-half hour per day. Total
ten hours per day."

"That sounds well. Does it take that much time every day?"

"Yes, indeed! It would take me twenty!" she answered. "You know the
week I was here alone I never did half she does. Of course I had Baby,
but then I didn't do the things. I guess when it doesn't take so long
they just don't do what ought to be done. For she is quick, awfully
quick about her work. And she's thorough. I suppose it ought to be
done that way--but I never had one before."

"She keeps mighty fresh and bright-looking after these herculean
labors."

"Yes, but then she rests! Her ten hours are from six-thirty a.m., when
she goes into the kitchen as regularly as a cuckoo clock, to
eight-thirty p.m. when she is all through and her kitchen looks like
a--well it's as clean and orderly as if no one was ever in it."

"Ten hours--that's fourteen."

"I know it, but she takes out four. She claims time to eat her meals."

"Preposterous!"

"Half an hour apiece, and half an hour in the morning to rest--and two
in the afternoon. Anyway she is out, two hours every afternoon, riding
in the electric cars!"

"That don't look like a very hard job. Her day laborer doesn't get two
hours off every afternoon to take excursions into the country!"

"No, I know that, but he doesn't begin so early, nor stop so late. She
does her square ten hours work, and I suppose one has a right to time
off."

"You seem dubious about that, my dear."

"Yes, that's just where it's awkward. I'm used to girls being in all
the time, excepting their day out. You see I can't leave baby, nor
always take him--and it interferes with my freedom afternoons."

"Well--can't you arrange with her somehow?"

"See if you can. She says she will only give ten hours of time for a
dollar and a half a day--tisn't but fifteen cents an hour--I have to pay
a woman twenty that comes in. And if she is to give up her chance of
sunlight and fresh air she wants me to pay her extra--by the hour. Or
she says, if I prefer, she would take four hours every other day--and so
be at home half the time. I said it was difficult to arrange--with
baby, and she was very sympathetic and nice, but she won't alter her
plans."

"Let her go, and get a less exacting servant."

"But--she does her work so well! And it saves a lot, really. She knows
all about marketing and things, and plans the meals so as to have things
lap, and it's a comfort to have her in the house and feel so safe and
sure everything will be done right."

"Well, it's your province, my dear. I don't profess to advise. But I
assure you I appreciate the table, and the cleanness of everything, and
the rested look in your eyes, dear girl!"

She slipped her hand into his affectionately. "It does make a
difference," she said. "I _could_ get a girl for $20.00 and save nearly
$2.60 a week--but you know what they are!"

"I do indeed," he admitted fervently. "It's worth the money to have
this thing done so well. I think she's right about the wages. Better
keep her."

"O--she'll only agree to stay six months even at this rate!"

"Well--keep her six months and be thankful. I thought she was too good
to last!"

They looked over the offered contract again. It closed with:

"This agreement to hold for six months from date if mutually
satisfactory. In case of disagreement two weeks' notice is to be given
on either side, or two weeks' wages if preferred by the employer." It
was dated, and signed "Miss D. C. Bell."

And with inward amusement and great display of penmanship they added
"Mrs. Isabel J. Porne," and the contract was made.

[Erratum]

Apology is due to Mr. Horace Traubel, by whose kind permission "Little
Leafy Brothers," in our February issue, was reprinted from "The
Conservator," for not giving proper acknowledgment. Also to our readers
for the same omission.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

V.

MASCULINE LITERATURE.

When we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find it
filled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class; the
writer mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's--Kuchen, Kinder,
Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of
cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelming
subject of clothing; and of moral instruction. All this is recognized
as "feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal else the women
would not read it. What parallel have we in "masculine" literature?

"None!" is the proud reply. "Men are people! Women, being 'the sex,'
have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view,
which must be provided for. Men, however, are not restricted--to them
belongs the world's literature!"

Yes, it has belonged to them--ever since there was any. They have
written it and they have read it. It is only lately that women,
generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that
they have been allowed to write. It is but a little while since Harriet
Martineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visitors came
in--writing was "masculine"--sewing "feminine."

We have not, it Is true, confined men to a narrowly construed "masculine
sphere," and composed a special literature suited to it. Their effect
on literature has been far wider than that, monopolizing this form of
art with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominant
impulse of self-expression; and being, as we have seen essentially and
continually "the sex;" they have impressed that sex upon this art
overwhelmingly; they have given the world a masculized literature.

It is hard for us to realize this. We can readily see, that if women
had always written the books, no men either writing or reading them,
that would have surely "feminized" our literature; but we have not in
our minds the concept, much less the word, for an overmasculized
influence.

Men having been accepted as humanity, women but a side-issue; (most
literally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said was
human--and not to be criticized. In no department of life is it easier
to contravert this old belief; to show how the male sex as such differs
from the human type; and how this maleness has monopolized and
disfigured a great social function.

Human life is a very large affair; and literature is its chief art. We
live, humanly, only through our power of communication. Speech gives us
this power laterally, as it were, in immediate personal contact. For
permanent use speech becomes oral tradition--a poor dependence.
Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateral
spread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know the
past, govern the present, and influence the future. In its servicable
common forms it is the indispensable daily servant of our lives; in its
nobler flights as a great art no means of human inter-change goes so
far.

In these brief limits we can touch but lightly on some phases of so
great a subject; and will rest the case mainly on the effect of an
exclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction.
In poetry and the drama the same influence is easily traced, but in the
first two it is so baldly prominent as to defy objection.

History is, or should be, the story of our racial life. What have men
made it? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very
beginning with the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea,
what do we find of history?

"I Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords! (etc. etc.), "went down into
the miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an
hundred and forty and two thousands!" That, or something like it, is
the kind of record early history gives us.

The story of Conquering Kings, who and how many they killed and
enslaved; the grovelling adulation of the abased; the unlimited
jubilation of the victor; from the primitive state of most ancient
kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our
omni present soldier's monuments: the story of war and conquest--war and
conquest--over and over; with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow
and flapping of wings as show most unmistakably the natural source.

All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair. "That
was the way people lived in those days!" says the reader.

No--it was not the way women lived.

"O, women!" says the reader, "Of course not! Women are different."

Yea, women are different; and _men are different!_ Both of them, as
sexes, differ from the human norm, which is social life and all social
development. Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years.
The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions,
religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture--all the
human processes were going on as well as they were able, between wars.

The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rival
and takes the prize--therefore was he made male. Maleness means war.

Not only so; but being male, he cares only for male interests. Men,
being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written,
have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the
beginning by continual destruction; but a history which is one unbroken
record of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame.

As to what went on that was of real consequence, the great slow steps of
the working world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress of
humanity--that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view.
Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the
great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and
domestic, we are beginning to write real history, human history, and not
merely masculine history. But that great branch of literature--Hebrew,
Greek, Roman, and all down later times, shows beyond all question, the
influence of our androcentric culture.

Literature is the most powerful and necessary of the arts, and fiction
is its broadest form. If art "holds the mirror up to nature" this art's
mirror is the largest of all, the most used. Since our very life
depends on some communication; and our progress is in proportion to our
fullness and freedom of communication; since real communication requires
mutual understanding; so in the growth of the social consciousness, we
note from the beginning a passionate interest in other people's lives.

The art which gives humanity consciousness is the most vital art. Our
greatest dramatists are lauded for their breadth of knowledge of "human
nature," their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poets
are those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelings
of the human heart; and the power of fiction is that it can reach and
express this great field of human life with no limits but those of the
author.

When fiction began it was the legitimate child of oral tradition; a
product of natural brain activity; the legend constructed instead of
remembered. (This stage is with us yet as seen in the constant changes
in repetition of popular jokes and stories.)

Fiction to-day has a much wider range; yet it is still restricted,
heavily and most mischievously restricted.

What is the preferred subject matter of fiction?

There are two main branches found everywhere, from the Romaunt of the
Rose to the Purplish Magazine;--the Story of Adventure, and the Love
Story.

The Story-of-Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means,
but it is a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have
proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories
and the tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque" Our most
popular weekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction.

All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting and
fishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing,
are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on human
processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory
excitement so long the sole province of men.

It is to be noted here that even in the overwhelming rise of industrial
interests to-day, these, when used as the basis for a story, are forced
into line with one, or both, of these two main branches of
fiction;--conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these
"interests" in it, there is no story--so holds the editor; the dictum
being, put plainly, "life has no interests except conflict and love!"

It is surely something more than a coincidence that these are the two
essential features of masculinity--Desire and Combat--Love and War.

As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with its
major processes; and these--in our stage of human development--are more
varied than our fiction would have us believe. Half the world consists
of women, we should remember, who are types of human life as well as
men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure,
their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of
distinction as the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to
their four Ks, there should be a "men's column" also; and all the
"sporting news" and fish stories be put in that; they are not world
interests; they are male interests.

Now for the main branch--the Love Story. Ninety per cent. of fiction is
In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given in
fiction. What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?

It is the story of the pre-marital struggle. It is the Adventures of
Him in Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her! Story after
story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition
of the Preliminaries.

Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter
of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions,
all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life
fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as
its necessary base.

"Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader. "This is
personal experience--it has the universal appeal!"

Take human life personally then. Here is a Human Being, a life,
covering some seventy years; involving the changing growth of many
faculties; the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of
middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the
human body, Living. Out of this field of personal life, with all of its
emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one
emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex.

The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare dispute
this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then
why do the stories stop at marriage?"

There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect:

The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and woo her
as he did before marriage; to which he replies, "Why should I run after
the street-car when I've caught it?"

Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a
reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a
fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected
as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's
love should be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is
the general underlying, world-lifting force. The "life-force," now so
glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not
in the emotions of an assistant in the preliminary stages.

What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love,
or even concerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume of
excitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually
focussed upon a two or three years space of life "mid the blank miles
round about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a
starkly masculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest
and excitement.

If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich and
broad; full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling; the care
and feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and far
beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the
fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand
flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, the
educative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the passion
of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together.

But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save
the feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one.

To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest
of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the
female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest.
In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow
processes of life's fulfillment.

In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this stage
of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to pale
beside that ever-growing Social love and care, which guards and guides
the children of to-day.

The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a
thing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened and
intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in
the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of
life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to
be held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past.

This was the power of Balzac--he took in more than this one field. This
was the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, all kinds of
people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some
preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking
narrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there--for it is part of
life; but it does not dominate the whole scene--any more than it does in
life.

The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. The
makers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people in
general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world-food is
taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly;
teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow up
becoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than could
even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should be
wise--and not be disappointed.

As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored all
one way. A young man faces life--the seventy year stretch, remember,
and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continually
vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and
bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with the
unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on.

If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing,
despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But what
impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers
without knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life it
failed to give him.

A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; and is
given the same books--with restrictions. Remember the remark of
Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and
twenty-nine cannot be told to women." There is a certain broad field of
literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to
keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named
teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman is
given the same fiction. Love and love and love--from "first sight" to
marriage. There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement,
"and lived happily ever after."

Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction,
under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of
woman's life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned section
of man's life.

As we daily grow more human, both of us, this noble art is changing for
the better so fast that a short lifetime can mark the growth. New
fields are opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no
swift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and
habits inculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so
long we are well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we
think is good and proper.

The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow
racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of
visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism.

It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumers of
literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculine
canons because all the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds to
a recognition of the change which is even now upon us.

This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are so
filled with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play,
that when a book like David Harum is offered the publisher refuses it
repeatedly, and finally insists on a "heart interest" being injected by
force.

Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyone
remember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of
the heart?

Robert Ellesmere was a popular book--but not because of its heart
interest.

Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than any
work of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love and
married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in
that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant
and servant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people
for each other; love of humanity and love of God.

It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinion
will live, like the name of Empedocles.

The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered
to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of
one June would have us believe.

The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of
fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to
give up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objects to
it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her
discontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that she
wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with
women--a thing we could never write about before because we never had it
before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between
mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein
the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship;
the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph,
the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a living
soul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many
million children would eagerly read: Fifth the new attitude of the
full-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standards
of conscious motherhood.

There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but this
chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this
art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the
male--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury to
life.

WATER-LURE

We who were born of water, in the warm slow ancient years,
Love it to-day for all we pay
Of terror and loss and tears.

The child laughs loud at the fountain, laughs low in the April rain,
And the sea's bright brim is a lure to him
Where a lost life lives again.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

In a recent number of a leading "woman's" periodical is a disquisition
on love--a girl's ideals of love, based on Elaine and the Sleeping
Beauty.

This is a serious matter surely. Love being an essential preliminary to
the best parenthood, and the major element of personal happiness, is a
most commanding subject; and as the woman is the most important factor
in both lines, her ideals are worth discussing.

We note that the author says "girl" instead of woman; but as boys and
girls do have ideals they too are worth considering. What are these
ideals as discussed in this worthy periodical?

We are told that the girl is often unfit to meet "the big grave
questions of love itself;" and "to make sure that she has these ideals
from the highest sources."

"What are these sources?" pursues this sagacious monitor; and then she
offers--"fairy tales and old romance." For ideals of love--here--in
America to-day--we are referred to Grimm's Marchen; to Cinderella, the
Goose Girl, Beauty and the Beast, and the Sleeping Beauty! Various
heroines of mythology and fiction are adduced, and the crowning type of
all is Elaine, The Lily Maid of Astolat.

A careful reading of fairy tales, however worthy, does not seem to throw
much light on the problems of marriage; and right marriage is what all
this love and its ideals are for. Here is a matter calling for the
widest knowledge, the noblest purpose, the highest principles, the most
practical action; a matter concerning not only the private happiness of
two persons, but the lives of several others; a matter not only of
individual appeal, but of the very broadest social duty; and for its
ideals we are referred to old fairy tales!

The Sleeping Beauty is a most happy instance of woman's right attitude
toward love and marriage--she is to remain starkly unconscious, using
absolutely no discretion; and cheerfully marry the first man that kisses
her! In the fairy story he was a noble prince--but the average sleeping
beauty of to-day is often waked up by the wrong man!

Sometimes she is married first, and wakes up afterward; like the lady in
Lear's limerick:

"There a an old man of Jamaica,
Who suddenly married a Quaker.
But she cried out, "O Lack!
I have married a Black!"
Which grieved that old man of Jamaica."

How does Elaine answer as an ideal? Almost as well as the Sleeping
Beauty. Ignorance absolute; instant surrender to the first man
appearing; no shadow of inquiry as to his being married or single; much
less as to his morals. Then the apotheosis of the tidy-making
instinct--embroidering a cover for a steel shield! a thing meant to bear
the hardest kind of blows, made for that purpose, and she so afraid it
will get "rust or soilure" that she constructs this decorated case for
it.

Then the going forth to nurse her wounded hero, and the ingenuous
proposal, when he offers to requite her.

Being refused, what then? Any thought of her duty in the world? Of her
two good brothers? Of her aged father--very fond of her too, that old
father? Not the slightest. Not even a glimmer of purpose to live
on--if her love was so wonderful, and be of some use to the great man,
by and by.

Nothing but herself. "I want something! I can't have it! I will
die!"--and die she did, of set purpose, by a sort of flabby suicide;
making the most careful arrangements for a spectacular funeral barge,
and a letter that should wring the heart of the obdurate man.

Well, I can remember when I cried over it--at about thirteen. It does
appeal to girls; but is it therefore an ideal to be held up as a High
Source and followed?

It is time and more than time for us to recognize that marriage is for
men and women, not girls and boys; that "love" is not a rosy dream but a
responsible undertaking, with consequences; that no true ideals of love
can be formed without full recognition of its purpose.

*

A thin small book of verse, a booklet, called "Philemon's Verses," from
The Evergreen Press, Montrose, Pa., has been sent me for review.

Now I have a theory of my own in regard to what we are pleased to call
"minor poets"; namely, that poetry is a natural form of expression to
most human beings, and should be used as such.

Why do we imagine that the best method of ensuring our output of poetry
is to have a few huge monoliths of poets--and no more? Is the great
poet surer of recognition, safer in his unparalleled superiority because
there is nothing between him and the unpoetical? Is a vast audience of
the dumb and verseless, who do not care enough for poetry to write any
of it, the best for the great poet?

According to my theory there is as much room for short-distance poetry
as for the kind that rings around the world for centuries.

As I look over this small collection, I am impressed most with its clear
sincerity, in feeling and expression. These verses are not cooked--they
grew.

Then I feel anew the range of interests of the modern singer--so swiftly
widening, so intensely human, and yet so sympathetic with nature.
Democracy in literature is a good thing; not only in subject matter but
in universal participation.

So that the contribution be genuine, the real speech of an honest soul,
it has its own place in the literature of the day; and that is evidently
the case with Philemon's Verses.

*

"The Lords of High Decision" is a title more high-sounding than
descriptive. If the story had been called "The Slaves of Low Decision"
it would be more recognizable.

Here is a man who wabbles through some thirty years of life without
coming to any decision at all; a woman who at no time had any decision;
another who decided wrong, then right, then wrong again, and was finally
let out by an accident; a first-class pitcher who gives up his chosen
field to be a chauffeur and general attache of the wabbler, and finally
loses his life to save another man--perhaps he was a Lord of High
Decision.

Perhaps Paddock, the settlement-running clergyman was. Or Walsh,--the
suppressed parent. Colonel Craighill, the father of the Wabbler, is
well drawn, evidently from nature.

A highly Episcopalian attitude toward divorce is taken; the heroine, who
has been for some years free of a husband casually married in youth, is
led to see her duty in going back to him; even though she deeply loves
another man. As her ex-husband has more sense than she, he refuses to
accept this living sacrifice. She succeeds in giving up something,
however, for her lover, a man of considerable wealth, makes his proposal
in this wise:

"I know I ask a great deal when I ask you to give up your work for
me--and yet I ask it. Remember, there is no gratitude in this--you are
a woman, and I am a man--and I love you."

Poor girl! She has struggled through poverty, a broken marriage, long
years of valiant endeavor for this work of hers; it was the innocent and
easily domesticated task of drawing children's faces--she was an
illustrator. Yet the first thing her "lover" does, in the very height
of his new virtue, in the very act of offering himself, is to assume as
a matter of course that she would give it up. And she did--for this
Lord of High Decision.

"The Lords of High Decision," by Meredith Nicholson. Doubleday, Page &
Co. $1.50.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

Here is a "Personal" of distinct interest.

May it reach its mark!

"WANTED:

"By a Socialist woman of mature years, a congenial person of similar
sex, education and tastes to share with her the expense of a country
home in the mountains, and the study--as far as may be agreeable--of
nature, music, literature, sociology and socialism. No objection to
Suffragette or Vegetarian, but advocates of Anarchism or Free Love are
hereby contra-indicated. Credentials to be frankly exchanged with
personal history. Address: The Widow Baucis, Care of The Forerunner, 67
Wall St., New York City."

*

Apropos of the above, there are no more intimate and pressing problems
than those of the business of living, the mere every day processes.

We are still so hampered by the customs and habits of the proprietary
family that we assume as a matter of course that one must live, first,
in childhood and youth, with one's parental family; second, in middle
life, with one's matrimonial family; and third in age, with one's
descendants.

Now suppose one is of age, unmarried, and not fond of living with one's
parents. This is not wicked. It is not extremely unusual. One may be
very fond of one's parents, as parents, yet prefer other society in
daily life. Enforced residence in the same home of a number of grown
people of widely different ages, interests, and ideas, is not made happy
by the fact of blood-relationship.

There are many indications to show an increasing divergence of tastes
between our rapidly changing generations. Each set of young people seem
to differ more sharply from their parents than they, in their youth,
similarly differed.

Moreover, there are a number of persons who do not marry, and yet have a
right to live--yes, and to enjoy living.

Men have long ago solved this problem to their own satisfaction. They
leave home early; they have learned in cabin, camp and club to live in
groups, without women; and many, with an apartment of their own as a
base, seem to find enough society in visits among their friends.

But women are only beginning to realize that it is possible to live,
yes, and to have a "home," even if one has not, in the original sense,
"a family." The amount of happiness that really congenial friends can
find in living together is fully as great as that of some marriages; and
quite outside of daily contact in the household remains that boundless
field of strength, stimulus and delight which comes of true social
contact.

But the machinery of life is all arranged for married couples; who
rightly constitute the majority; and the unmarried woman is not allowed
for. She is, however, rapidly awakening to the fact that she has an
actual individual existence--as well as a potential marital existence;
and is learning how to use and enjoy it.

PLAYTIME

AUNT ELIZA

(This was done by two persons, in alternate lines, as a game.)

Seven days had Aunt Eliza
Read the Boston Advertiser,
Seven days on end;
But in spite of her persistence
Still she met with some resistance
From her bosom friend.

Thomas Brown, the Undertaker,
Who declared he'd have to shake her,
Daily called at ten;
Asking if dear Aunt's condition
Would allow of his admission,
With his corps of men.

Aunt Eliza heard him pleading,
Ceased an instant from her reading,
Softly downward stole;
Soon broke up the conversation,
Punctuating Brown's oration,
With a shower of coal.

THE CRIPPLE

There are such things as feet, human feet;
But these she does not use;
Firm and supple, white and sweet,
Softly graceful, lightly fleet,
For comfort, beauty, service meet--
There are feet, human feet,
These she does with scorn refuse--
Preferring shoes.

There are such things as shoes--human shoes;
Though scant and rare the proof;
Serviceable, soft and strong,
Pleasant, comely, wearing long,
Easy as a well-known song--
There are shoes, human shoes,
But from these she holds aloof--
Prefers the hoof!

There are such things as hoofs, sub-human hoofs,
High-heeled, sharp anomalies;
Small and pinching, hard and black,
Shiny as a beetle's back,
Cloven, clattering on the track,
There are hoofs, sub-human hoofs,
She cares not for truth, nor ease--
Preferring these!

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 6
APRIL, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

The human soul is built for the love and service of the whole world.
We confine it to the love and service of five or six persons, and the
salvation of one.

WHEN THOU GAINEST HAPPINESS

When thou gainest happiness,
Life's full cup of sweetest wine;
Dost thou stop in grieving blind
Over those dark years behind?
Bitter now, rebellious, mad,
For the things thou hast not had--
Before everything was thine?

Dost not rather wonder why
Nearing blaze of joy like this,
Some prevision had not lit
Those dark hours with hope of it?
That thou couldst in patient strength
Have endured that sorrow's length--
_Nothing_--to the coming bliss!

Now, awaken! Look ahead!
See the earth one garden fair!
See the evils of to-day
Like a child's faults put away!
See our little history seem
Like a short forgotten dream!
See a full-grown rising race
Find our joy their commonplace!
Find such new joy of their own
As our best hopes have not known!
And take shame for thy despair!

MARTHA'S MOTHER

It was nine feet long.

It was eight feet high.

It was six feet wide.

There was a closet, actually!--a closet one foot deep--that was why she
took this room. There was the bed, and the trunk, and just room to open
the closet door part way--that accounted for the length. There was the
bed and the bureau and the chair--that accounted for the width. Between
the bedside and the bureau and chair side was a strip extending the
whole nine feet. There was room to turn around by the window. There
was room to turn round by the door. Martha was thin.

One, two, three, four--turn.

One, two, three, four--turn.

She managed it nicely.

"It is a stateroom," she always said to herself. "It is a luxurious,
large, well-furnished stateroom with a real window. It is _not_ a
cell."

Martha had a vigorous constructive imagination. Sometimes it was the
joy of her life, her magic carpet, her Aladdin's lamp. Sometimes it
frightened her--frightened her horribly, it was so strong.

The cell idea had come to her one gloomy day, and she had foolishly
allowed it to enter--played with it a little while. Since then she had
to keep a special bar on that particular intruder, so she had arranged a
stateroom "set," and forcibly kept it on hand.

Martha was a stenographer and typewriter in a real estate office. She
got $12 a week, and was thankful for it. It was steady pay, and enough
to live on. Seven dollars she paid for board and lodging, ninety cents
for her six lunches, ten a day for carfare, including Sundays;
seventy-five for laundry; one for her mother--that left one dollar and
sixty-five cents for clothes, shoes, gloves, everything. She had tried
cheaper board, but made up the cost in doctor's bills; and lost a good
place by being ill.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor hall bedrooms a cage," said she
determinedly. "Now then--here is another evening--what shall I do?
Library? No. My eyes are tired. Besides, three times a week is
enough. 'Tisn't club night. Will _not_ sit in the parlor. Too wet to
walk. Can't sew, worse'n reading--O good _land!_ I'm almost ready to
go with Basset!"

She shook herself and paced up and down again.

Prisoners form the habit of talking to themselves--this was the
suggestion that floated through her mind--that cell idea again.

"I've got to get out of this!" said Martha, stopping short. "It's
enough to drive a girl crazy!"

The driving process was stayed by a knock at the door. "Excuse me for
coming up," said a voice. "It's Mrs. MacAvelly."

Martha knew this lady well. She was a friend of Miss Podder at the
Girls' Trade Union Association. "Come in. I'm glad to see you!" she
said hospitably. "Have the chair--or the bed's really more
comfortable!"

"I was with Miss Podder this evening and she was anxious to know whether
your union has gained any since the last meeting--I told her I'd find
out--I had nothing else to do. Am I intruding?"

"Intruding!" Martha, gave a short laugh. "Why, it's a godsend, Mrs.
MacAvelly! If you knew how dull the evenings are to us girls!"

"Don't you--go out much? To--to theaters--or parks?" The lady's tone
was sympathetic and not inquisitive.

"Not very much," said Martha, rather sardonically. "Theaters--two
girls, two dollars, and twenty cents carfare. Parks, twenty cents--walk
your feet off, or sit on the benches and be stared at. Museums--not
open evenings."

"But don't you have visitors--in the parlor here?"

"Did you see it?" asked Martha.

Mrs. MacAvelly had seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly
and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read
by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a
social fiction of privacy at the other end of the room.

"Yes, we have visitors--but mostly they ask us out. And some of us
don't go," said Martha darkly.

"I see, I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly, with a pleasant smile; and Martha
wondered whether she did see, or was just being civil.

"For instance, there's Mr. Basset," the girl pursued, somewhat
recklessly; meaning that her visitor should understand her.

"Mr. Basset?"

"Yes, 'Pond & Basset'--one of my employers."

Mrs. MacAvelly looked pained. "Couldn't you--er--avoid it?" she
suggested.

"You mean shake him?" asked Martha. "Why, yes--I could. Might lose my
job. Get another place--another Basset, probably."

"I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly again. "Like the Fox and the Swarm of
Flies! There ought to be a more comfortable way of living for all you
girls! And how about the union--I have to be going back to Miss
Podder."

Martha gave her the information she wanted, and started to accompany her
downstairs. They heard the thin jangle of the door-bell, down through
the echoing halls, and the dragging feet of the servant coming up. A
kinky black head was thrust in at the door.

"Mr. Basset, callin' on Miss Joyce," was announced formally.

Martha stiffened. "Please tell Mr. Basset I am not feeling well
to-night--and beg to be excused.

She looked rather defiantly at her guest, as Lucy clattered down the
long stairs; then stole to the railing and peered down the narrow well.
She heard the message given with pompous accuracy, and then heard the
clear, firm tones of Mr. Basset:

"Tell Miss Joyce that I will wait."

Martha returned to her room in three long steps, slipped off her shoes
and calmly got into bed. "Good-night, Mrs. MacAvelly," she said. "I'm
so sorry, but my head aches and I've gone to bed! Would you be so very
good as to tell Lucy so as you're going down."

Mrs. MacAvelly said she would, and departed, and Martha lay
conscientiously quiet till she heard the door shut far below.

She was quiet, but she was not contented.

*

Yet the discontent of Martha was as nothing to the discontent of Mrs.
Joyce, her mother, in her rural home. Here was a woman of fifty-three,
alert, vigorous, nervously active; but an automobile-agitated horse had
danced upon her, and her usefulness, as she understood it, was over.
She could not get about without crutches, nor use her hands for
needlework, though still able to write after a fashion. Writing was not
her _forte,_ however, at the best of times.

She lived with a widowed sister in a little, lean dusty farmhouse by the
side of the road; a hill road that went nowhere in particular, and was
too steep for those who were going there.

Brisk on her crutches, Mrs. Joyce hopped about the little house, there
was nowhere else to hop to. She had talked her sister out long
since--Mary never had never much to say. Occasionally they quarreled
and then Mrs. Joyce hopped only in her room, a limited process.

She sat at the window one day, staring greedily out at the lumpy
rock-ribbed road; silent, perforce, and tapping the arms of her chair
with nervous intensity. Suddenly she called out, "Mary! Mary Ames!
Come here quick! There's somebody coming up the road!"

Mary came in, as fast as she could with eggs in her apron. "It's Mrs.
Holmes!" she said. "And a boarder, I guess."

"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Joyce, eagerly. "It's that woman that's
visiting the Holmes--she was in church last week, Myra Slater told me
about her. Her name's MacDowell, or something."

"It ain't MacDowell," said her sister. "I remember; it's MacAvelly."

This theory was borne out by Mrs. Holmes' entrance and introduction of
her friend.

"Have you any eggs for us, Mrs. Ames?" she said.

"Set down--set down," said Mrs. Ames cordially. "I was just getting in
my eggs--but here's only about eight yet. How many was you wantin'?"

"I want all you can find," said Mrs. Holmes. "Two dozen, three
dozen--all I can carry."

"There's two hens layin' out--I'll go and look them up. And I ain't
been in the woodshed chamber yet. I'll go'n hunt. You set right here
with my sister." And Mrs. Ames bustled off.

"Pleasant view you have here," said Mrs. MacAvelly politely, while Mrs.
Holmes rocked and fanned herself.

"Pleasant! Glad you think so, ma'am. Maybe you city folks wouldn't
think so much of views if you had nothing else to look at!"

"What would you like to look at?"

"Folks!" said Mrs. Joyce briefly. "Lots of folks! Somethin' doin'."

"You'd like to Iive in the city?"

"Yes, ma'am--I would so! I worked in the city once when I was a girl.
Waitress. In a big restaurant. I got to be cashier--in two years! I
like the business!"

"And then you married a farmer?" suggested Mrs. Holmes.

"Yes, I did. And I never was sorry, Mrs. Holmes. David Joyce was a
mighty good man. We was engaged before I left home--I was workin' to
help earn, so 't we could marry."

"There's plenty of work on a farm, isn't there?" Mrs. MacAvelly
inquired.

Mrs. Joyce's eager eyes kindled. "There is _so!_" she agreed. "Lots to
do. And lots to manage! We kept help then, and the farm hands, and the
children growin' up. And some seasons we took boarders."

"Did you like that?"

"I did. I liked it first rate. I like lots of people, and to do for
'em. The best time I ever had was one summer I ran a hotel."

"Ran a hotel! How interesting!"

"Yes'm--it was interesting! I had a cousin who kept a summer hotel up
here in the mountains a piece--and he was short-handed that summer and
got me to go up and help him out. Then he was taken sick, and I had the
whole thing on my shoulders! I just enjoyed it! And the place cleared
more that summer'n it ever did! He said 'twas owin' to his advantageous
buyin'. Maybe 'twas! But I could 'a bought more advantageous than he
did--I could a' told him that. Point o' fact, I did tell him that--and
he wouldn't have me again."

"That was a pity!" said Mrs. Holmes. "And I suppose if it wasn't for
your foot you would do that now--and enjoy it!"

"Of course I could!" protested Mrs. Joyce. "Do it better 'n ever, city
or country! But here I am, tied by the leg! And dependent on my sister
and children! It galls me terribly!"

Mrs. Holmes nodded sympathetically. "You are very brave, Mrs. Joyce,"
she said. "I admire your courage, and--" she couldn't say patience, so
she said, "cheerfulness."

Mrs. Ames came in with more eggs. "Not enough, but some," she said, and
the visitors departed therewith.

Toward the end of the summer, Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union
Association, sweltering in the little office, was pleased to receive a
call from her friend, Mrs. MacAvelly.

"I'd no idea you were in town," she said.

"I'm not, officially," answered her visitor, "just stopping over between
visits. It's hotter than I thought it would be, even on the upper west
side."

"Think what it is on the lower east side!" answered Miss Podder,
eagerly. "Hot all day--and hot at night! My girls do suffer so! They
are so crowded!"

"How do the clubs get on?" asked Mrs. MacAvelly. "Have your girls any
residence clubs yet?"

"No--nothing worth while. It takes somebody to run it right, you know.
The girls can't; the people who work for money can't meet our wants--and
the people who work for love, don't work well as a rule."

Mrs. McAvelly smiled sympathetically. "You're quite right about that,"
she said. "But really--some of those 'Homes' are better than others,
aren't they?"

"The girls hate them," answered Miss Podder. "They'd rather board--even
two or three in a room. They like their independence. You remember
Martha Joyce?"

Mrs. MacAvelly remembered. "Yes," she said, "I do--I met her mother
this summer."

"She's a cripple, isn't she?" asked Miss Podder. "Martha's told me
about her."

"Why, not exactly. She's what a Westerner might call 'crippled up
some,' but she's livelier than most well persons." And she amused her
friend with a vivid rehearsal of Mrs. Joyce's love of the city and her
former triumphs in restaurant and hotel.

"She'd be a fine one to run such a house for the girls, wouldn't she?"
suddenly cried Miss Podder.

"Why--if she could," Mrs. MacAvelly admitted slowly.

"_Could!_ Why not? You say she gets about easily enough. All she's
have to do is _manage,_ you see. She could order by 'phone and keep the
servants running!"

"I'm sure she'd like it," said Mrs. MacAvelly. "But don't such things
require capital?"

Miss Podder was somewhat daunted. "Yes--some; but I guess we could
raise it. If we could find the right house!"

"Let's look in the paper," suggested her visitor. "I've got a
_Herald._"

"There's one that reads all right," Miss Podder presently proclaimed.
"The location's good, and it's got a lot of rooms--furnished. I suppose
it would cost too much."

Mrs. MacAvelly agreed, rather ruefully.

"Come," she said, "it's time to close here, surely. Let's go and look
at that house, anyway. It's not far."

They got their permit and were in the house very shortly. "I remember
this place," said Miss Podder. "It was for sale earlier in the summer."

It was one of those once spacious houses, not of "old," but at least of
"middle-aged" New York; with large rooms arbitrarily divided into
smaller ones.

"It's been a boarding-house, that's clear," said Mrs. MacAvelly.

"Why, of course," Miss Podder answered, eagerly plunging about and
examining everything. "Anybody could see that! But it's been done
over--most thoroughly. The cellar's all whitewashed, and there's a new
furnace, and new range, and look at this icebox!" It was an ice-closet,
as a matter of fact, of large capacity, and a most sanitary aspect.

"Isn't it too big?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

"Not for a boarding-house, my dear," Miss Podder enthusiastically
replied. "Why, they could buy a side of beef with that ice-box! And
look at the extra ovens! Did you ever see a place better furnished--for
what we want? It looks as if it had been done on purpose!"

"It does, doesn't it?" said Mrs. MacAvelley.

Miss Podder, eager and determined, let no grass grow under her feet.
The rent of the place was within reason.

"If they had twenty boarders--and some "mealers," I believe it could be
done! she said. "It's a miracle--this house. Seems as if somebody had
done it just for us!"

*

Armed with a list of girls who would agree to come, for six and seven
dollars a week, Miss Podder made a trip to Willettville and laid the
matter before Martha's mother.

"What an outrageous rent!" said that lady.

"Yes--New York rents _are_ rather inconsiderate," Miss Podder admitted.
"But see, here's a guaranteed income if the girls stay--and I'm sure
they will; and if the cooking's good you could easily get table boarders
besides."

Mrs. Joyce hopped to the bureau and brought out a hard, sharp-pointed
pencil, and a lined writing tablet.

"Let's figger it out," said she. "You say that house rents furnished at
$3,200. It would take a cook and a chambermaid!"

"And a furnace man," said Miss Podder. "They come to about fifty a
year. The cook would be thirty a month, the maid twenty-five, if you
got first-class help, and you'd need it."

"That amounts to $710 altogether," stated Mrs. Joyce.

"Fuel and light and such things would be $200," Miss Podder estimated,
"and I think you ought to allow $200 more for breakage and extras
generally."

"That's $4,310 already," said Mrs. Joyce.

Then there's the food," Miss Podder went on. "How much do you think it
would cost to feed twenty girls, two meals a day, and three Sundays?"

"And three more," Mrs. Joyce added, "with me, and the help,
twenty-three. I could do it for $2.00 a week apiece."

"Oh!" said Miss Podder. "_Could_ you? At New York prices?"

"See me do it!" said Mrs. Joyce.

"That makes a total expense of $6,710 a year. Now, what's the income,
ma'am?"

The income was clear--if they could get it. Ten girls at $6.00 and ten
at $7.00 made $130.00 a week--$6,700.00 a year.

"There you are!" said Mrs. Joyce triumphantly. "And the 'mealers'--if
my griddle-cakes don't fetch 'em I'm mistaken! If I have ten--at $5.00
a week and clear $3.00 off 'em--that'll be another bit--$1,560.00 more.
Total income $8,320.00. More'n one thousand clear! Maybe I can feed
'em a little higher--or charge less!"

The two women worked together for an hour or so; Mrs. Ames drawn in
later with demands as to butter, eggs, and "eatin' chickens."

"There's an ice-box as big as a closet," said Miss Podder.

Mrs. Joyce smiled triumphantly. "Good!" she said. "I can buy my
critters of Judson here and have him freight 'em down. I can get apples
here and potatoes, and lots of stuff."

"You'll need, probably, a little capital to start with," suggested Miss
Podder. "I think the Association could--"

"It don't have to, thank you just the same," said Mrs. Joyce. "I've got
enough in my stocking to take me to New York and get some fuel.
Besides, all my boarders is goin' to pay in advance--that's the one sure
way. The mealers can buy tickets!"

Her eyes danced. She fairly coursed about the room on her nimble
crutches.

"My!" she said, "it will seem good to have my girl to feed again."

*

The house opened in September, full of eager girls with large appetites
long unsatisfied. The place was new-smelling, fresh-painted,
beautifully clean. The furnishing was cheap, but fresh, tasteful, with
minor conveniences dear to the hearts of women.

The smallest rooms were larger than hall bedrooms, the big ones were
shared by friends. Martha and her mother had a chamber with two beds
and space to spare!

The dining-room was very large, and at night the tables were turned into
"settles" by the wall and the girls could dance to the sound of a hired
pianola. So could the "mealers," when invited; and there was soon a
waiting list of both sexes.

"I guess I can make a livin'," said Mrs. Joyce, "allowin' for bad
years."

"I don't understand how you feed us so well--for so little," said Miss
Podder, who was one of the boarders.

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce, privately. "Your breakfast don't really cost
more'n ten cents--nor your dinner fifteen--not the way I order! Things
taste good 'cause they're _cooked_ good--that's all!"

"And you have no troubles with your help?"

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce again, more privately. "I work 'em hard--and pay
'em a bonus--a dollar a week extra, as long as they give satisfaction.
It reduces my profits some--but it's worth it!"

"It's worth it to us, I'm sure!" said Miss Podder.

Mrs. MacAvelly called one evening in the first week, with warm interest
and approval. The tired girls were sitting about in comfortable rockers
and lounges, under comfortable lights, reading and sewing. The untired
ones were dancing in the dining-room, to the industrious pianola, or
having games of cards in the parlor.

"Do you think it'll be a success?" she asked her friend.

"It _is_ a success!" Miss Podder triumphantly replied. "I'm immensely
proud of it!"

"I should think you would be," aid Mrs. MacAvelly.

The doorbell rang sharply.

Mrs. Joyce was hopping through the hall at the moment, and promptly
opened it.

"Does Miss Martha Joyce board here?" inquired a gentleman.

"She does."

"I should like to see her," said he, handing in his card.

Mrs. Joyce read the card and looked at the man, her face setting in hard
lines. She had heard that name before.

"Miss Joyce is engaged," she replied curtly, still holding the door.

He could see past her into the bright, pleasant rooms. He heard the
music below, the swing of dancing feet, Martha's gay laugh from the
parlor.

The little lady on crutches blocked his path.

"Are you the housekeeper of this place?" he asked sharply.

"I'm more'n that!" she answered. "I'm Martha's mother."

Mr. Basset concluded he would not wait.

FOR FEAR

For fear of prowling beasts at night
They blocked the cave;
Women and children hid from sight,
Men scarce more brave.

For fear of warrior's sword and spear
They barred the gate;
Women and children lived in fear,
Men lived in hate.

For fear of criminals to-day
We lock the door;
Women and children still to stay
Hid evermore.

Come out! You need no longer hide!
What fear ye now?
No wolf nor lion waits outside--
Only a cow.

Come out! The world approaches peace,
War nears its end;
No warrior watches your release--
Only a friend.

Come out! The night of crime his fled--
Day is begun;
Here is no criminal to dread--
Only your son!

The world, half yours, demands your care,
Waken, and come!
Make it a woman's world, safe, fair,
Garden and home!

NURSERY-MINDEDNESS

Where do we get our first training in the field of common behavior, our
earliest and strongest impressions of ethics?

In the nursery, in the early environment of the little child, in the
daily influences that affect the opening mind; or, to put it in a phrase
hallowed by poetic imagery, "at our mother's knee." We are accustomed
to think highly of these early influences. Almost any man will say that
his mother taught him what was right--it was his own evil nature that
drove him wrong. So believing, we perpetuate these influences unchanged
from age to age, and it is small wonder we think human nature to be
inherently perverse if it continues to show such poor results from such
good education.

Suppose for a moment we take down one more old idol, and look into his
record, examining the environment of the little child as dispassionately
as we would examine the environment of a college student.

The child is born into an atmosphere of personality, which is essential,
and reared continuously in that atmosphere, which is not so essential.
Owing to these early impressions; so deep and ineffaceable, he grows to
look at human life with a huge "I," and an almost as large "My Family,"
in his immediate foreground; so out of drawing as to throw the whole
world into false perspective, seen as a generality, dim, confused and
distant.

In this atmosphere of unbroken personality, he repeats continually the
mistakes of the early savage, the animistic tendency we should as a race
have long since outgrown. The family with the male head was the great
hotbed of early religions.

In this primitive group, unchecked by any higher authority of king or
governor, arose ancestor-worship--that unnatural religion which erases
the laws of life and bids the chicken feed the hen--or rather the
rooster. No matriarchal cult would have made that mistake. The
patriarch owned his women, owned his children, owned all the property;
he gave and took away at his pleasure. Therefore, looming vast in
unchecked pride, he erected sacrificial religions all his own, demanding
sons to perform sacred rites in his honor; and grew so inflated with
superiority that he thanked his patriarchal God and Father every day
that he was not born a woman.

This Personality has cast its shadow across heaven. It has deified its
own traits and worships them. Through blind and selfish eyes it has
mis-seen and misrepresented God, and forced dark dogmas on its children,
age after age. Each child of us, though really born to the broad light
of a democratic age, is reared in the patriarchate. Each child of us
sees the father, dispenser of benefits, arbiter and ruler of the family;
and, so reared, each child of us repeats from generation to generation
the mistakes of personality.

The basic law of the patriarchal system was obedience, and is yet. The
child's first ethical lesson is in the verb "to obey." Not with any
convincing instance of right or wrong, though life bristles with them,
but as the duty of submission. He is not taught to observe, to relate,
to make his inference, to act, and to note results. He is taught that
his one duty is not to think, observe, or experiment, but to do what he
is told.

This is a convenient habit for those in authority; but not conducive to
any true development of the ethical sense. We are turned out into a
world of cause and effect, with no knowledge, no experience, no guide
whatever, but the painfully acquired habit of doing what some one else
tells us. We are not taught to study right and wrong conduct, to
understand it, to see the wisdom of the one and the folly of the other.

The child's first notion of "being good" is either sheer inaction or
prompt submission. What we call "a good baby" is one who does
absolutely nothing. Here we have an explanation of the amazing inertia
of people in general; of the smug immobility of those shining lights
"the best people." We all have been taught--rigorously taught in our
infancy--that to "keep quiet" was a virtue; and we keep quiet through
life. This is one clear instance of our nursery-mindedness.

We are reared in a black and white world: sharp wrong,--to do almost
anything amusing, and particularly and most of all, To Disobey; sharp
right,--to do nothing whatever, and particularly and best of all, To
Obey. We come out into a world that is all colors of the rainbow in
every shade and blending, where the things people tell us to do are
mostly wrong, and to do right requires the most strenuous and
independent activity. Greatly are we hindered in the work of life
to-day by our mis-taught infancy.

In the narrow round of family life, the inevitable repetitions, the
natural ruts of usage, the child has forced upon him the conservatism he
should have every help to out-grow. Habit uncriticized and unresisted;
convention an unquestioned good; these are the rules of the little
world. How he hates it! How he longs for something different--for
something to happen! The world is full of differences and happenings,
but he is helpless to meet them--he has been only trained in narrow
routine.

The oldest status in life, that of serving woman, is about him in his
infancy. That mother should do for him is right and natural, but why
should his mother be waiting on these other persons? Why is she the
house-servant as well as the mother? If she is but a fashionable person
in gay attire, he still has about him women servants. He cannot think
as yet, but he accepts from daily contact this serving womanhood as
natural and right, grows up to demand it in his household and to rear
his children in its shadow; and so perpetuate from age to age the
patriarchal error.

Then deep into this infant soul sinks the iron weight of what we call
Discipline. We women, having small knowledge of child-nature or
world-nature, never studying nature at all, but each girl-mother handed
on from nursery to nursery, a child teaching children, we undertake to
introduce the new soul to life!

We show him, as "life," the nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which
we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these
surroundings. Two of the heaviest crosses to both the child and mother
lie in his bi- and tri-daily difficulties with clothing, and prolonged
initiation to the sacred mysteries of the table. We seek, as best we
may, to bend the new soul visiting this world to a correct fulfilment of
the polite functions of our domestic shrine; and we succeed unhappily
well. We rear a world of people who put manners before morals,
conventions before principles, conformity before initiative. Sorely do
we strive with the new soul, to choke questionings and crush its
resistance.

"Why?" says the child, "Why?" protesting with might and main against the
mummery into which he is being forced.

"Because Mother says so!" is the reason given. "Because you must obey!"
is the duty given; and to enforce the command comes punishment.

Punishment is a pitiful invention arbitrarily inserted in place of
consequence. Its power is in giving pain. Its appeal is to terror.
We, immovable and besotted in our ancient sanctuaries, deliberately give
pain to little children, deliberately arouse in them that curse of old
savagery, blind fear. To compel behavior which we cannot explain even
to ourselves, to force the new wine of their young lives into the old
bottles of our traditional habits, we keep alive in the little child an
attitude of mind the whole world should seek to outgrow and forget
forever.

The ethics of the nursery does not give us laws to be learned and
understood; relations of cause and effect for instructive practice;
matters of general use and welfare not to know and practice which argues
a foolish ignorance. It gives command purely arbitrary and
disconnected; their profit is not visible to the child; and their
penalties, while painfully conspicuous, bear no real relation to
offences.

Besides being arbitrary and disconnected, the penalties we give our
children have this alarming weakness--they are wholly contingent upon
discovery. No whipped child is too young to learn that his whipping did
not follow on the act--unless his mother knew he did it. Thus with
elaborate care, with trouble to ourselves and anguish to the child, we
develop in him the attitude of mind with which our criminals, big and
little, face the world--it is not what you do that matters--it is being
found out. This is not the position of the thinking being--it is
nursery-mindedness.

Pain and terror we teach our babies, and also shame. The child is pure,
innocent, natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to
smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor
conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We
degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate
life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little
children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and
indecencies of primitive convention, we have preserved throughout the
ages in our guarded temple of ancient idols, and in that atmosphere we
rear the child.

The heaviest drag on progress is the persistence of race-habits and
traditions, once natural and useful, but long since outgrown. The main
stronghold of this body of tradition is in that uneducated, undeveloped,
unorganized, lingering rudiment of earlier social forms--the
woman-servant group of primitive industries, in which our children grow.

We have cried out against the crushing restriction of old religions;
and, going farther, have seen that these religions have their strongest
hold on the woman and the child. It is here suggested that it is not
the religion that keeps down the woman and renews its grip on each new
generation of children, but that it is the degraded status of the woman
and her influence on the child which made possible such religions in the
first instance, and which accounts for their astonishing persistence in
modern times.

In the atmosphere of the nursery each child re-learns continually the
mental habits of a remote and lowly past. His sense of duty is a
personal one, it is obligation; and justified when we attempt to justify
it by the beneficent services of the parent. This parental religion
naturally pictures God as a parent--a father of course, and people as
his children. We, as his children, are to love and serve and glorify
him, and he to take care of us, parentally.

Coming out into the world of which he has been taught nothing, the young
man finds no corroboration whatever for this theory. He does not see
the alleged grounds of the religious views given him, and so he drops
his religion altogether.

If he had early been shown God in a thousand beautiful common instances,
as ever-present, unescapable, and beneficent Law--the sure, sound
constant force of life, then he would find the same God still visibly at
work in the world of love and labor, and not lose his religion by
outgrowing his nursery.

Instead of personal gratitude for personal service as a cause for good
behavior, he should be shown that his parents and teachers serve him and
other children because so best is the human race improved; and that he,
and the other children, owe their life's service to the same great body,
to the human race. This ideal would need neither patching nor
enlargement, but would last unbroken through life.

Our nursery-bred consciences suffer personally for personal sins, with
morbid keenness, but are stone blocks of indifference to the collective
sins which are the major evils of life to-day. A man may pointed out to
us as a wholesale malefactor, a dealer in bad meat, a poisoner of the
public mind through a degraded press, an extortioner, liar, doer of
uncounted evil; we reply that he is a "moral man"--that his personal
relations are excellent; and, if one continues to complain, we say,
"What has he done to you?"

Personality is the limit of our moral sense, the steady check to growth
in ethical understanding, as it is in economics, and in art. The normal
growth of the human soul to-day is into a wide, fluent, general relation
with mankind; and a deeper more satisfying and _workable_ conception of
God than we ever knew before. In our nursery-mindedness we face the
problems of civic morality, catching visible offenders and shutting them
in a closet, sending them supperless to bed, hurting and depriving them
in various ways, as blindly, stupidly and unprofitably as a woman spanks
her child.

Children reared in a democratic, scientific, broadly educative
atmosphere, would grow up able to see the absurdity of our primitive
institutions--but such an atmosphere does not originate in and cannot be
brought into the nursery.

As an inevitable reaction from nursery-government, the child finds
joyous relief in sheer riot and self-will. The behavior of our boys in
college shows well their previous uneducated and ill-educated condition.
The persistence of "hazing" among twentieth century persons old enough
to go to school, shows the weakness of nursery culture. This is a
custom prevalent among low savage races, known as "initiation by
torture." Its reason--if it ever had any--was to outdo nature's
cruelest and most wasteful methods, and to prepare for a life of
struggle and pain by a worse experience to begin with. About the age of
puberty, when body and mind are both sensitive, this pleasant rite took
place. Those who survived it, habituated to cruelty and unreason, were
thereby fitted to live cruel and unreasonable lives--and did so.

Race-customs, as old as this, die hard. They have to be understood,
condemned, opposed, and educated out of us. Our small children get no
such education. They, as a class, get no influence tending to uplift
and develop their sociological status. Clever and "well-trained" they
may be; well-loved and well--at least, expensively-dressed. But as soon
as they escape the nursery bounds, out pops the primeval savage,
unrestrained. These young students, with their revolting practices,
ought to know that they are in the social stage with cannibalism,
voudooism, fetich-worship; and to be hot with shame at their condition.
It is the race's babyhood,--a drooling, fumbling, infantile
folly--manifested almost to adult age. That it endures is due to our
nursery-mindedness.

About the little child should cluster and concentrate the noblest forces
of our latest days, our highest wisdom and deepest experience, our most
subtle skill. Such wisdom, skill and experience do not exist in the
average young woman, albeit a mother; still less in her low-class,
ignorant serving-maids. A wider, deeper love would desire better
environment for the child, more foresight and more power would provide
it. But our love, though intense, is narrow and largely childish--the
mother has not long left the influence of her own nursery; and neither
wisdom nor power grew there. Some day our women will see this. They
will understand at last what womanhood is for, and the power and glory
of civilized motherhood. They will see that the educative influences of
the first few years are pre-eminently important, and prepare for them as
assiduously as they prepare to give a college education to older
children.

The baby is a new human soul, learning Life. He should have about him
from the first, Truth and Order, with a sequence of impressions which
great minds have labored to prepare. He should have his mother's love,
his father's care, his brother's and sister's society; his home's
seclusion; and he should also have from his earliest days, a place to
share with many other children, and the love and care and service of
such guides and teachers as are most fit to help the growing of the
world.

We have gone far indeed in those things we learn after we leave home.
In our trades and professions, our arts and sciences, in the broad
avenues of the world's life, we have made great progress--albeit
hampered always to some extent by our nursery-mindedness.

But in our own personal relations we are stagnant, hide-bound, inert.
Our littleness, our morbidness, our self-consciousness, our narrowness,
our short-sightedness, our oppressive, insistent, omnipresent
personality--all these still crush us down. Bumptious with a good
child's complacency, grieving with a bad child's remorse, indifferent
and rebellious as ill-trained children are, we live unawakened among
social laws. We enjoy when we can; we suffer much--and needlessly; but
we seem incapable of taking hold of our large world-questions and
settling them.

It is only an apparent limitation. We are quite capable were we but
taught so. What hinders us is Nursery-Mindedness.

A VILLAGE OF FOOLS

There was a certain village, a little village on a little stream; and
the inhabitants thereof were Fools.

By profession they were tillers of the soil; and they kept beasts,
beasts of burden, and beasts to furnish meat. They lived upon the
products of their tillage, and upon the beasts, and upon fish from the
stream.

The Wise said, "This is a good village. There is land to furnish food,
and beasts in plenty, and a good stream flowing steadily from the
tree-clothed hills. These people should prosper well."

They did not know that the people of the village were Fools; Utter
Fools. Observe now their Foolishness! They cut down the trees of the
hills to make their fires withal; many and great fires, without stint or
hindrance; and presently there was no more any forest upon the hills to
cover them. Then the moist breath of the cloud-building forest was
dried away; and the thick wet sponge about the roots of the forest was
dried away; and the snow slid down the hills as it slides down steep
roof gables; and the rain ran down the narrow valleys as it runs down
gutter pipes; and the village was swept by floods in flood time, and lay
parched and thirsty in the dry season. And the people of the village
called the flood an Act of God, and they called the drought an Act of
God; for they were Fools.

Their fields they tilled continuously, for they needs must eat;
gathering from the good ground year after year, and generation after
generation, till the ground became sour and stale, and was bad ground
and bore no fruit.

"Surely," said the Wise, "they will gather from the stables of their
beasts and from the village that which shall enrich their soil and make
it bear fruit again."

They did not know that the people of the Village were Fools.

Thus did they with their beasts. They kept them thick in their village;
draught animals and burden-bearers; and from the defiled streets arose a
Plague of Flies, and tormented the people, so that they fell sick of
divers diseases. And they themselves crowded together ever more
thickly, till all the village became unsavory and unfit for human
habitation. Then they arose, wagging their heads sagaciously; and with
vast labor and expense they gathered together from their stables and
their habitations all that which should enrich the soil and produce
fruit again; and they poured it carefully into the stream. Now this was
the stream from which they drank; and when they drank their diluted
diseases they fell sick anew, and many died.

Also the fish fed upon this filth, and they also absorbed diseases; and
the people fed upon the fish which had fed upon the filth, and again
fell sick, and many died.

And those who died they carefully wrapped up in many coverings and laid
in the ground--them and their diseases with them--that the seeds thereof
might be fostered eternally, and continually came forth anew.

But the Wise burned their dead in clean fire, cherishing their memories
in their hearts, but not their slowly deteriorating remains in the dark
earth. And the wise kept their forests as a wild garden, planting as
well as reaping; having wood therefrom at need, and always the green
beauty and the cool shade, the moist winds and carpet of held water over
the hill slopes.

Their streams were pure and steady, tree shadowed and grass bordered
from end to end; for a tree beareth food as well as a field, and is
planted in a moment and the young tree cometh up as the old tree dieth.

And their fields they fed continually, so that they bore more rather
than less from year to year, and they prospered and did not die of
hand-made diseases.

But they knew not their own wisdom, for these things it seemed to them
that even Fools might see, and do accordingly.

Neither did the Fools know their own foolishness.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER VI.

THE CYNOSURE.

It's a singular thing that the commonest place
Is the hardest to properly fill;
That the labor imposed on a full half the race
Is so seldom performed with good will--
To say nothing of knowledge or skill!

What we ask of all women, we stare at in one,
And tribute of wonderment bring;
If this task of the million is once fitly done
We all hold our hands up and sing!
It's really a singular thing!

Isabel Porne was a cautious woman, and made no acclaim over her new
acquisition until its value was proven. Her husband also bided his
time; and when congratulated on his improved appearance and air of
contentment, merely vouchsafed that his wife had a new girl who could
cook.

To himself he boasted that he had a new wife who could love--so cheerful
and gay grew Mrs. Porne in the changed atmosphere of her home.

"It is remarkable, Edgar," she said, dilating repeatedly on the peculiar
quality of their good fortune. "It's not only good cooking, and good
waiting, and a clean house--cleaner than I ever saw one before; and it's
not only the quietness, and regularity and economy--why the bills have
gone down more than a third!"

"Yes--even I noticed that," he agreed.

"But what I enjoy the most is the _atmosphere,_" she continued. "When I
have to do the work, the house is a perfect nightmare to me!" She
leaned forward from her low stool, her elbows on her knees, her chin in
her hands, and regarded him intently.

"Edgar! You know I love you. And I love my baby--I'm no unfeeling
monster! But I can tell you frankly that if I'd had any idea of what
housework was like I'd never have given up architecture to try it."

"Lucky for me you hadn't!" said he fondly. "I know it's been hard for
you, little girl. I never meant that you should give up
architecture--that's a business a woman could carry on at home I
thought, the designing part anyway. There's your 'drawing-room' and all
your things--"

"Yes," she said, with reminiscent bitterness, "there they are--and there
they might have stayed, untouched--if Miss Bell hadn't come!"

"Makes you call her "Miss Bell" all the time, does she?"

Mrs. Porne laughed. "Yes. I hated it at first, but she asked if I
could give her any real reason why the cook should be called by her
first name more than the seamstress or governess. I tried to say that
it was shorter, but she smiled and said that in this case it was
longer!--Her name is Diantha--I've seen it on letters. And it is one
syllable longer. Anyhow I've got used to Miss Bell now."

"She gets letters often?"

"Yes--very often--from Topolaya where she came from. I'm afraid she's
engaged." Mrs. Porne sighed ruefully.

"I don't doubt it!" said Mr. Porne. "That would account for her six
months' arrangement! Well, my dear--make hay while the sun shines!"

"I do!" she boasted. "Whole stacks! I've had a seamstress in, and got
all my clothes in order and the baby's. We've had lot of dinner-parties
and teas as you know--all my "social obligations" are cleared off!
We've had your mother for a visit, and mine's coming now--and I wasn't
afraid to have either of them! There's no fault to be found with my
housekeeping now! And there are two things better than that--yes,
three."

"The best thing is to see you look so young and handsome and happy
again," said her husband, with a kiss.

"Yes--that's one. Another is that now I feel so easy and lighthearted I
can love you and baby--as--as I _do!_ Only when I'm tired and
discouraged I can't put my hand on it somehow.

He nodded sympathetically. "I know, dear," he said. "I feel that way
myself--sometimes. What's the other?"

"Why that's best of aIl!" she cried triumphantly. "I can Work again!
When Baby's asleep I get hours at a time; and even when he's awake I've
fixed a place where he can play--and I can draw and plan--just as I used
to--_better_ than I used to!"

"And that is even more to you than loving?" he asked in a quiet
inquiring voice.

"It's more because it means _both!_" She leaned to him, glowing, "Don't
you see? First I had the work and loved it. Then you came--and I loved
you--better! Then Baby came and I loved him--best? I don't know--you
and baby are all one somehow."

There was a brief interim and then she drew back, blushing richly. "Now
stop--I want to explain. When the housework got to be such a
nightmare--and I looked forward to a whole lifetime of it and _no_
improvement; then I just _ached_ for my work--and couldn't do it! And
then--why sometimes dear, I just wanted to run away! Actually! From
_both_ of you!--you see, I spent five years studying--I was a _real_
architect--and it did hurt to see it go. And now--O now I've got It and
You too, darling! _And_ the Baby!--O I'm so happy!"

"Thanks to the Providential Miss Bell," said he. "If she'll stay I'll
pay her anything!"

The months went by.

Peace, order, comfort, cleanliness and economy reigned in the Porne
household, and the lady of the house blossomed into richer beauty and
happiness; her contentment marred only by a sense of flying time.

Miss Bell fulfilled her carefully specified engagement to the letter;
rested her peaceful hour in the morning; walked and rode in the
afternoon; familiarized herself with the length and breadth of the town;
and visited continuously among the servants of the neighborhood,
establishing a large and friendly acquaintance. If she wore rubber
gloves about the rough work, she paid for them herself; and she washed
and ironed her simple and pretty costumes herself--with the result that
they stayed pretty for surprising periods.

She wrote letters long and loving, to Ross daily; to her mother twice a
week; and by the help of her sister's authority succeeded in maintaining
a fairly competent servant in her deserted place.

"Father was bound he wouldn't," her sister wrote her; "but I stood right
up to him, I can now I'm married!--and Gerald too--that he'd no right to
take it out of mother even if he was mad with you. He made a fuss about
your paying for the girl--but that was only showing off--_he_ couldn't
pay for her just now--that's certain. And she does very well--a good
strong girl, and quite devoted to mother." And then she scolded
furiously about her sister's "working out."

Diantha knew just how hard it was for her mother. She had faced all
sides of the question before deciding.

"Your mother misses you badly, of course," Ross wrote her. "I go in as
often as I can and cheer her up a bit. It's not just the work--she
misses you. By the way--so do I." He expressed his views on her new
employment.

Diantha used to cry over her letters quite often. But she would put
them away, dry her eyes, and work on at the plans she was maturing, with
grim courage. "It's hard on them now," she would say to herself. "Its
hard on me--some. But we'll all be better off because of it, and not
only us--but everybody!"

Meanwhile the happy and unhappy households of the fair town buzzed in
comment and grew green with envy.

In social circles and church circles and club circles, as also in
domestic circles, it was noised abroad that Mrs. Edgar Porne had "solved
the servant question." News of this marvel of efficiency and propriety
was discussed in every household, and not only so but in barber-shops
and other downtown meeting places mentioned. Servants gathered it at
dinner-tables; and Diantha, much amused, regathered it from her new
friends among the servants.

Does she keep on just the same?" asked little Mrs. Ree of Mrs. Porne in
an awed whisper.

"Just the same if not better. I don't even order the meals now, unless
I want something especial. She keeps a calendar of what we've had to
eat, and what belongs to the time of year, prices and things. When I
used to ask her to suggest (one does, you know: it is so hard to think
up a variety!), she'd always be ready with an idea, or remind me that we
had had so and so two days before, till I asked her if she'd like to
order, and she said she'd be willing to try, and now I just sit down to
the table without knowing what's going to be there."

"But I should think that would interfere with your sense of freedom,"
said Mrs. Ellen A Dankshire, "A woman should be mistress of her own
household."

"Why I am! I order whenever I specially want anything. But she really
does it more--more scientifically. She has made a study of it. And the
bills are very much lower."

"Well, I think you are the luckiest woman alive!" sighed Mrs. Ree. "I
wish I had her!"

Many a woman wished she had her, and some, calling when they knew Mrs.
Porne was out, or descending into their own kitchens of an evening when
the strange Miss Bell was visiting "the help," made flattering
propositions to her to come to them. She was perfectly polite and
agreeable in manner, but refused all blandishments.

"What are you getting at your present place--if I may ask?" loftily
inquired the great Mrs. Thaddler, ponderous and beaded.

"There is surely no objection to your asking, madam," she replied
politely. "Mrs. Porne will not mind telling you, I am sure."

"Hm!" said the patronizing visitor, regarding her through her lorgnette.
"Very good. Whatever it is I'll double it. When can you come?"

"My engagement with Mrs. Porne is for six months," Diantha answered,
"and I do not wish to close with anyone else until that time is up.
Thank you for your offer just the same."

"Peculiarly offensive young person!" said Mrs. Thaddler to her husband.
"Looks to me like one of these literary imposters. Mrs. Porne will
probably appear in the magazines before long."

Mr. Thaddler instantly conceived a liking for the young person, "sight
unseen."

Diantha acquired quite a list of offers; places open to her as soon as
she was free; at prices from her present seven dollars up to the
proposed doubling.

"Fourteen dollars a week and found!--that's not so bad," she meditated.
"That would mean over $650 clear in a year! It's a wonder to me girls
don't try it long enough to get a start at something else. With even
two or three hundred ahead--and an outfit--it would be easier to make
good in a store or any other way. Well--I have other fish to fry!"

So she pursued her way; and, with Mrs. Porne's permission--held a sort
of girl's club in her spotless kitchen one evening a week during the
last three months of her engagement. It was a "Study and Amusement
Club." She gave them short and interesting lessons in arithmetic, in
simple dressmaking, in easy and thorough methods of housework. She gave
them lists of books, referred them to articles in magazines, insidiously
taught them to use the Public Library.

They played pleasant games in the second hour, and grew well acquainted.
To the eye or ear of any casual visitor it was the simplest and most
natural affair, calculated to "elevate labor" and to make home happy.

Diantha studied and observed. They brought her their poor confidences,
painfully similar. Always poverty--or they would not be there. Always
ignorance, or they would not stay there. Then either incompetence in
the work, or inability to hold their little earnings--or both; and
further the Tale of the Other Side--the exactions and restrictions of
the untrained mistresses they served; cases of withheld wages; cases of
endless requirements; cases of most arbitrary interference with their
receiving friends and "followers," or going out; and cases, common
enough to be horrible, of insult they could only escape by leaving.

"It's no wages, of course--and no recommendation, when you leave like
that--but what else can a girl do, if she's honest?"

So Diantha learned, made friends and laid broad foundations.

The excellence of her cocking was known to many, thanks to the weekly
"entertainments." No one refused. No one regretted acceptance. Never
had Mrs. Porne enjoyed such a sense of social importance.

All the people she ever knew called on her afresh, and people she never
knew called on her even more freshly. Not that she was directly
responsible for it. She had not triumphed cruelly over her less happy
friends; nor had she cried aloud on the street corners concerning her
good fortune. It was not her fault, nor, in truth anyone's. But in a
community where the "servant question" is even more vexed than in the
country at large, where the local product is quite unequal to the
demand, and where distance makes importation an expensive matter, the
fact of one woman's having, as it appeared, settled this vexed question,
was enough to give her prominence.

Mrs. Ellen A. Dankshire, President of the Orchardina Home and Culture
Club, took up the matter seriously.

"Now Mrs. Porne," said she, settling herself vigorously into a
comfortable chair, "I just want to talk the matter over with you, with a
view to the club. We do not know how long this will last--"

"Don't speak of it!" said Mrs. Porne.

"--and it behooves us to study the facts while we have them."

"So much is involved!" said little Mrs. Ree, the Corresponding
Secretary, lifting her pale earnest face with the perplexed fine lines
in it. "We are all so truly convinced of the sacredness of the home
duties!"

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked their hostess.

"We must have that remarkable young woman address our club!" Mrs.
Dankshire announced. "It is one case in a thousand, and must be
studied!"

"So noble of her!" said Mrs. Ree. "You say she was really a
school-teacher? Mrs. Thaddler has put it about that she is one of these
dreadful writing persons--in disguise!"

"O no," said Mrs. Porne. "She is perfectly straightforward about it,
and had the best of recommendations. She was a teacher, but it didn't
agree with her health, I believe."

"Perhaps there is a story to it!" Mrs. Ree advanced; but Mrs. Dankshire
disagreed with her flatly.

"The young woman has a theory, I believe, and she is working it out. I
respect her for it. Now what we want to ask you, Mrs. Porne, is this:
do you think it would make any trouble for you--in the household
relations, you know--if we ask her to read a paper to the Club? Of
course we do not wish to interfere, but it is a remarkable
opportunity--very. You know the fine work Miss Lucy Salmon has done on
this subject; and Miss Frances Kellor. You know how little data we
have, and how great, how serious, a question it is daily becoming! Now
here is a young woman of brains and culture who has apparently grappled
with the question; her example and influence must not be lost! We must
hear from her. The public must know of this."

"Such an ennobling example!" murmured Mrs. Ree. "It might lead numbers
of other school-teachers to see the higher side of the home duties!"

"Furthermore," pursued Mrs. Dankshire, "this has occured to me. Would
it not be well to have our ladies bring with them to the meeting the
more intelligent of their servants; that they might hear and see
the--the dignity of household labor--so ably set forth?

"Isn't it--wouldn't that be a--an almost dangerous experiment?" urged
Mrs. Ree; her high narrow forehead fairly creped with little wrinkles:
"She might--say something, you know, that they might--take advantage
of!"

"Nonsense, my dear!" replied Mrs. Dankshire. She was very fond of Mrs.
Ree, but had small respect for her judgment. "What could she say? Look
at what she does! And how beautifully--how perfectly--she does it! I
would wager now--_may_ I try an experiment Mrs. Porne?" and she stood
up, taking out her handkerchief.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Porne, "with pleasure! You won't find any!"

Mrs. Dankshire climbed heavily upon a carefully selected chair and
passed her large clean plain-hemmed handkerchief across the top of a
picture.

"I knew it!" she proclaimed proudly from her eminence, and showed the
cloth still white. "That," she continued in ponderous descent, "that is
Knowledge, Ability and Conscience!"

"I don't see how she gets the time!" breathed Mrs. Ree, shaking her head
in awed amazement, and reflecting that she would not dare trust Mrs.
Dankshire's handkerchief on her picture tops.

"We must have her address the Club," the president repeated. "It will
do worlds of good. Let me see--a paper on--we might say 'On the True
Nature of Domestic Industry.' How does that strike you, Mrs. Ree?"

"Admirable!" said Mrs. Ree. "So strong! so succinct."

"That certainly covers the subject," said Mrs. Porne. "Why don't you
ask her?"

"We will. We have come for that purpose. But we felt it right to ask
you about it first," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Why I have no control over Miss Bell's movements, outside of working
hours," answered Mrs. Porne. "And I don't see that it would make any
difference to our relations. She is a very self-poised young woman, but
extremely easy to get along with. And I'm sure she could write a
splendid paper. You'd better ask her, I think."

"Would you call her in?" asked Mrs. Dankshire, "or shall we go out to
the kitchen?"

"Come right out; I'd like you to see how beautifully she keeps
everything."

The kitchen was as clean as the parlor; and as prettily arranged. Miss
Bell was making her preparation for lunch, and stopped to receive the
visitors with a serenely civil air--as of a country store-keeper.

"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Bell, very glad indeed," said Mrs.
Dankshire, shaking hands with her warmly. "We have at heard so much of
your beautiful work here, and we admire your attitude! Now would you be
willing to give a paper--or a talk--to our club, the Home and Culture
Club, some Wednesday, on The True Nature of Domestic Industry?"

Mrs. Ree took Miss Bell's hand with something of the air of a Boston
maiden accosting a saint from Hindoostan. "If you only would!" she
said. "I am sure it would shed light on this great subject!"

Miss Bell smiled at them both and looked at Mrs. Porne inquiringly.

"I should be delighted to have you do it," said her employer. "I know
it would be very useful."

"Is there any date set?" asked Miss Bell.

"Any Wednesday after February," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Well--I will come on the first Wednesday in April. If anything should
happen to prevent I will let you know in good season, and if you should
wish to postpone or alter the program--should think better of the
idea--just send me word. I shall not mind in the least."

They went away quite jubilant, Miss Bell's acceptance was announced
officially at the next club-meeting, and the Home and Culture Club felt
that it was fulfilling its mission.

[Untitled]

I gave myself to God.--
With humility and contrition,
In sacrifice and submission.
"Take me! Do not refuse me!
Order me--govern me--use me!
Nothing I ask for my own--
I pray to be thine alone!--"
And God smiled.

I gave myself to mankind.--
With sorrow and sympathy deep,
With pity that would not sleep.
"To serve you and save you, brothers!
To give my life for the others!
I ask no price--no place--
I seek but to help the race!--"
And God smiled.

I gave myself to Myself.--
In the knowledge that opens power;
In the truth's unfolding hour;
In the glory of service free;
The joy that such life can be:--
My life--that is never done!
For my neighbor and I are One!--
And God smiled.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

VI.

GAMES AND SPORTS

One of the sharpest distinctions both between the essential characters
and the artificial positions of men and women, is in the matter of games
and sports. By far the greater proportion of them are essentially
masculine, and as such alien to women; while from those which are
humanly interesting, women have been largely debarred by their arbitrary
restrictions.

The play instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in some
measure throughout life. As other young animals express their abounding
energies in capricious activities similar to those followed in the
business of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs and
kids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals imitate in their play
the more complex activities of their elders, so do children imitate
whatever activities they see about them. In this field of playing there
is no sex.

Similarly in adult life healthy and happy persons, men and women,
naturally express surplus energy in various forms of sport. We have
here one of the most distinctively human manifestations. The great
accumulation of social energy, and the necessary limitations of one kind
of work, leave a human being tired of one form of action, yet still
uneasy for lack of full expression; and this social need has been met by
our great safety valve of games and sports.

In a society of either sex, or in a society without sex, there would
still be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential to
human life. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated all the
terms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limited
fraction of human living, we may look to see this great field of
enjoyment as disproportionately divided.

It is not only that we have reduced the play impulse in women by
restricting them to one set of occupations, and overtaxing their
energies with mother-work and housework combined; and not only that by
our androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; but
we begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their methods of play
long before any natural distinction would appear.

Take that universal joy the doll, or puppet, as an instance. A small
imitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of a
child of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little
wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark,"
the omnipresent "Teddy Bear," any and every small model of a real thing
is a delight to the young human being. Of all things the puppet is the
most intimate, the little image of another human being to play with.
The fancy of the child, making endless combinations with these visible
types, plays as freely as a kitten in the leaves; or gravely carries out
some observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates its mother's
hunting.

So far all is natural and human.

Now see our attitude toward child's play--under a masculine culture.
Regarding women only as a sex, and that sex as manifest from infancy, we
make and buy for our little girls toys suitable to this view. Being
females--which means mothers, we must needs provide them with babies
before they cease to be babies themselves; and we expect their play to
consist in an imitation of maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which
interests all children, we have rendered as an eternal baby; and we
foist them upon our girl children by ceaseless millions.

The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy as well as the girl, but
not as a baby. He likes his jumping-jack, his worsted Sambo, often a
genuine rag-doll; but he is discouraged and ridiculed in this. We do
not expect the little boy to manifest a father's love and care for an
imitation child--but we do expect the little girl to show maternal
feelings for her imitation baby. It has not yet occurred to us that
this is monstrous.

Little children should not be expected to show, in painful precocity,
feelings which ought never to be experienced till they come at the
proper age. Our kittens play at cat-sports, little Tom and Tabby
together; but little Tabby does not play she is a mother!

Beyond the continuous dolls and their continuous dressing, we provide
for our little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, doll's houses, little
work-boxes--the imitation tools of their narrow trades. For the boy
there is a larger choice. We make for them not only the essentially
masculine toys of combat--all the enginery of mimic war; but also the
models of human things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For them, too,
are the comprehensive toys of the centuries, the kite, the top, the
ball. As the boy gets old enough to play the games that require skill,
he enters the world-lists, and the little sister, left inside, with her
everlasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl," and "mustn't play
with boys--boys are so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. She
"plays house." If very active she may jump rope, in solitary
enthusiasm, or in combination of from two to four. Her brother is
playing games. From this time on he plays the games of the world. The
"sporting page" should be called "the Man's Page" as that array of
recipes, fashions and cheap advice is called "the Woman's Page."

One of the immediate educational advantages of the boy's position is
that he learns "team work." This is not a masculine characteristic, it
is a human one; a social power. Women are equally capable of it by
nature; but not by education. Tending one's imitation baby is not
team-work; nor is playing house. The little girl is kept forever within
the limitations of her mother's "sphere" of action; while the boy learns
life, and fancies that his new growth is due to his superior sex.

Now there are certain essential distinctions in the sexes, which would
manifest themselves to some degree even in normally reared children; as
for instance the little male would be more given to fighting and
destroying; the little female more to caring for and constructing
things.

"Boys are so destructive!" we say with modest pride--as if it was in
some way a credit to them. But early youth is not the time to display
sex distinction; and they should be discouraged rather than approved.

The games of the world, now the games of men, easily fall into two broad
classes--games of skill and games of chance.

The interest and pleasure in the latter is purely human, and as such is
shared by the two sexes even now. Women, in the innocent beginnings or
the vicious extremes of this line of amusement, make as wild gamblers as
men. At the races, at the roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is
clearly seen.

In games of skill we have a different showing. Most of these are
developed by and for men; but when they are allowed, women take part in
them with interest and success. In card games, in chess, checkers, and
the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, and play well if
well-trained. Where they fall short in so many games, and are so wholly
excluded in others, is not for lack of human capacity, but for lack of
masculinity. Most games are male. In their element of desire to win,
to get the prize, they are male; and in their universal attitude of
competition they are male, the basic spirit of desire and of combat
working out through subtle modern forms.

There is something inherently masculine also in the universal dominance
of the projectile in their games. The ball is the one unescapable
instrument of sport. From the snapped marble of infancy to the flying
missile of the bat, this form endures. To send something forth with
violence; to throw it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems to
date back to one of the twin forces of the universe--the centrifugal and
centripetal energies between which swing the planets.

The basic feminine impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct;
the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. It
seems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him;
the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is.

Games of this sort will never appeal to women. They are not wrong; not
necessarily evil in their place; our mistake is in considering them as
human, whereas they are only masculine.

Play, in the childish sense is an expression of previous habit; and to
be studied in that light. Play in the educational sense should be
encouraged or discouraged to develop desired characteristics. This we
know, and practice; only we do it under androcentric canons; confining
the girl to the narrow range we consider proper for women, and assisting
the boy to cover life with the expression of masculinity, when we should
be helping both to a more human development.

Our settled conviction that men are people--the people, and that
masculine qualities are the main desideratam in life, is what keeps up
this false estimate of the value of our present games. Advocates of
football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life.
Life--from the wholly male point of view--is a battle, with a prize. To
want something beyond measure, and to fight to get--that is the simple
proposition. This view of life finds its most naive expression in
predatory warfare; and still tends to make predatory warfare of the
later and more human processes of industry. Because they see life in
this way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting,
especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life.
This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous
in its effects.

The valuable processes to-day are those of invention, discovery, all
grades of industry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honest
service and administration of our immense advantages. These are not
learned on the football field. This spirit of desire and combat may be
seen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed into
a cult of sportsmanship; so universally accepted among men as of
superlative merit as to quite blind them to other standards of judgment.

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest.
Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something;
and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich
triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to
him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr.
Peary expressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to
the effrontery and falsity of this claim--and all the country rose up
and denounced him as "unsportsmanlike!"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dominant in the masculine mind that
what they considered a deviation from these standards was of far more
importance than the question of fact involved; to say nothing of the
moral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that at
the cost of another's hard-won triumph.

If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not good
house-wifery," this would have been considered a most puerile comment.
But to be "unsportsmanlike" is the unpardonable sin.

Owing to our warped standards we glaringly misjudge the attitude of the
two sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women than
ever before have taken to playing cards; and some, unfortunately, play
for money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. The
amount of card playing among men--and the amount of money lost and won,
does not produce an equivalent comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share of
life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range
of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing they
maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most
rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service
save as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence on
real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human
service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any
other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; he
kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or to
protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the
sportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under
rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast
or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that
will give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in its
broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the
hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as they
are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this
indulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity.
That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to
the patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the man
has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is more
than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at
any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure
the central prize of his being--a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To
support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain
sight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that.
We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages upon
ages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliest
years, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through
unmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasure a
given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group of
activities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long after
their earlier use is gone.

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It is
an essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does
not satisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it,
chase it, catch it. He wants it to be "game." He is by virtue of his
sex a sportsman.

There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratified
so long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; but
it is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. The
reason why we have the present overwhelming mass of "sporting events,"
from the ball game to the prize fight, is because our civilization is so
overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly when we
see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form of
sex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts older
than the oldest savagery.

Besides our games and sports we have a large field of "amusements" also
worth examining. We not only enjoy doing things, but we enjoy seeing
them done by others. In these highly specialized days most of our
amusement consists in paying two dollars to sit three hours and see
other people do things.

This in its largest sense is wholly human. We, as social creatures, can
enjoy a thousand forms of expression quite beyond the personal. The
birds must each sing his own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold
performance; but human being feels the deep thrill of joy in their
special singers, actors, dancers, as well as in their own personal
attempts. That we should find pleasure in watching one another is
humanly natural, but what it is we watch, the kind of pleasure and the
kind of performance, opens a wide field of choice.

We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginal
Australian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome; we
know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childish
brutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit. We know, in a word, that
amusements vary; that they form a ready gauge of character and culture;
that they have a strong educational influence for good or bad. What we
have not hitherto observed is the predominant masculine influence on our
amusements. If we recall once more the statement with regard to
entertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, and
twenty-nine of them cannot be told to women," we get a glaring sidelight
on the masculine specialization in jokes.

"Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Women
have not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer. If women had
thirty "good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it
is possible that men, if they heard some of the twenty-nine, would not
find them funny. The overweight of one sex has told in our amusements
as everywhere else.

Because men are further developed in humanity than women are as yet,
they have built and organized great places of amusement; because they
carried into their humanity their unchecked masculinity, they have made
these amusements to correspond. Dramatic expression, is in its true
sense, not only a human distinction, but one of our noblest arts. It is
allied with the highest emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic,
covering the whole range of human feeling. Through it we should be able
continually to express, in audible, visible forms, alive and moving,
whatever phase of life we most enjoyed or wished to see. There was a
time when the drama led life; lifted, taught, inspired, enlightened.
Now its main function is to amuse. Under the demand for amusement, it
has cheapened and coarsened, and now the thousand vaudevilles and
picture shows give us the broken fragments of a degraded art of which
our one main demand is that it shall make us laugh.

There are many causes at work here; and while this study seeks to show
in various fields one cause, it does not claim that cause is the only
one. Our economic conditions have enormous weight upon our amusements,
as on all other human phenomena; but even under economic pressure the
reactions of men and women are often dissimilar. Tired men and women
both need amusement, the relaxation and restful change of irresponsible
gayety. The great majority of women, who work longer hours than any
other class, need it desperately and never get it. Amusement,
entertainment, recreation, should be open to us all, enjoyed by all.
This is a human need, and not a distinction of either sex. Like most
human things it is not only largely monopolized by men, but masculized
throughout. Many forms of amusement are for men only; more for men
mostly; all are for men if they choose to go.

The entrance of women upon the stage, and their increased attendance at
theatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the
"refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. It
would be no great advantage to have this department of human life
feminized; the improvement desired is to have it less masculized; to
reduce the excessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad
human interests and pleasures which men and women can equally
participate in and enjoy.

HIS AGONY

A Human Being goes past my house
Day after day, hour after hour,
Screaming in agony.
It is dreadful to hear him.
He beats the air with his hands, blindly, despairingly.
He shrieks with pain.
The passers-by do not notice him.
The woman who is with him does not notice him.
The policeman does not notice him.
No ambulance comes ringing.
No doctor rushes out of a house--no crowd collects.
He screams and screams.
No one notices him.
I bear him coming again.
It is terrible--one day after another.
I look out of my window.
Yes--the same Human Being--the same agony.
I cannot bear it. I rush down--out into the street.
I say to the woman who is with him--
"Why do you not do something?"
She says there is nothing to be done. She resents my interference.
She is a hired person, hired by the owner of the Human Being.
That is why no one does anything--
We dare not interfere with the Owner.
He is a very young Human Being,
That is why no one notices--
We are used to the sound of agony and the indifference of hired persons.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

The spread of social ethics among the medical profession is cause for
great rejoicing. Long and justly celebrated as benefactors of humanity,
and upholding with devotion the high ideals of their profession, they
have now begun to widen their usefulness and extend their ideals under
the general social awakening of our time.

Social sanitation is a rapidly extending process; as fast as our
discoveries reveal the nature of disease or new remedies therefor, our
governments, local and national, are beginning to safeguard the
community.

In the general movement to lengthen and strengthen human life, doctors
are necessarily most prominent because of their special knowledge. They
have long been necessary. they have become more and more valuable, but
their usefulness is still checked (as is true of all of us) by the
persistence of conservatism and old ideas.

Very recently the advance of bacteriological science has thrown new
light on a group of especially dangerous diseases; and still more
recently the doctors themselves, with a splendid exertion of social
conscience against tradition and habit, have begun to disseminate this
new light to the general public.

Those special payments of the "wages of sin," spoken of in varying
euphemisms, most commonly as "social diseases" are now better understood
by physicians; and they are making noble efforts to spread this
understanding among the people. Their efforts are gravely hindered by
two obstacles; one the professional tradition known as "the medical
secret," the other the universal prevalence of that primordial
superstition--the sex tabu.

This last belongs to the very deepest sedimentary deposit in the human
mind. The first rules the lowest savage peoples began to make were the
sex tabus and food tabus. Secrecy, mystery, all manner of childish
hocus pocus, were used to establish these primitive ideas; and the
weight of that black past is upon its yet.

The less developed a race, the less educated a class, the more solemn
and earnest they are in preserving the sex tabus; whereas with wide
scientific knowledge this field of facts is seen to be like others;
important and worth understanding; but not as special arcana to be
concealed and avoided.

If the doctors come forward to tell us how the typhoid bacillus is
disseminated, how dangerous it is, and how it is to be avoided, we are
interested, grateful, and more or less willing to profit by the
instruction. But when they try to tell us how the gonococcus attacks
humanity, how dangerous it, and how it is to be avoided, we say, "Sh!
That is something you mustn't talk about!"

To the credit of the profession they have kept on talking, many of them.
To the credit of some of our bravest and wisest editors the talk has
been widely published. And right here I wish to pay a well deserved
tribute to the "Ladies' Home Journal," which ought to have a Nobel prize
for great public service.

That paper--long scorned by me as the arch-type of all small
ultra-feminine backwardness, did the bravest thing a paper can do,
risked its whole position by flying in the face of the public and
printing the clearest, fullest, most enlightening accounts of the
present status of these "social diseases," their terrible effects, and
our duty toward them. It lost subscribers by the thousand and hundred
thousand, but it did the work; and did it better than any other
publication could; not only on account of its enormous circulation, but
because it went into the homes of pious and unenlightened persons who
would never have seen the information in more progressive magazines.

The negative inertia and positive resistance of the popular mind cannot
forever resist the constantly increasing pressure of knowledge now
poured forth on this subject.

But there is that other obstacle--the tradition of secrecy in the
medical profession.

Doctors take the Hipprocratic oath. They solemnly swear not to reveal
the confidences of their patients; or, more properly their innocent
confidences. They are not bound like priests in the confessional; if a
patient tells the doctor he has poisoned his mother or is about to
poison his father, the doctor is not bound to conceal the facts.

Nevertheless, if a patient afflicted with one of these highly contagious
diseases tells his doctor that he has poisoned his wife, or is to poison
his child--the doctor feels professionally bound to keep silence.

What puzzles an outsider is to see why the medical mind discriminates so
sharply here between the conduct required in cases of small pox or
scarlet fever, and in this case. If you tell the doctor you have
leprosy--there's nothing sacred about that. Off with you to the pest
house, at any cost of pain and shame to you or your family. Is the
whole community to be exposed to infection just to save your feelings?

So even with measles, with diphtheria, with yellow fever. The privacy
of the home is invaded, families are ruthlessly separated, the strong
arm of the law is reached out to protect the public against this danger;
and the doctor, so far from conniving with the patient, is legally
required to record all cases of this sort.

Now where is the difference?

These special diseases are more dangerous--and far more common, than
most of these mentioned above; and their effects, hereditary as well as
contagious, of measureless evil.

We are told that the difference is one of moral obliquity.

But surely there is no veil of secrecy about moral obliquity! If a man
is a thief or a murderer we do not respect his confidence and conceal
his offence. The papers justify their fierce blazonry of crimes and
sins by saying that it strengthens public opinion--protects the people.
No, it is not because of moral obliquity.

It is for precisely the same reason that you must not make inquiries of
a Chinaman as to his wife's health, or see a Turkish lady without her
veil--it is "improper!"

The doctors and the boards of health together can soon change this silly
convention, and the physician be required to register every case of this
sort as he does in other contagious diseases.

All this is called up at this time by a little book named "Never Told
Tales," sent me by the author, Dr. William Robinson of New York City.

It is a brave little book. Dr. Robinson is not a novelist by
profession, but his heart is so wrung and his brain so roused by the
hidden tragedy he sees all about him that he has reached out into
literature for aid. Everywhere this mischief creeps about, centering
rankly in every large city; carried everywhere by those infected;
bringing death, deformity, and hideous diseases into thousands of
innocent families; spreading, growing, and nobody saying anything about
it!

Dr. Robinson has said something. He has thrown out the little book of
stories, hoping that in the vivid narrative form it may reach and appeal
to those who would not read "medical literature"; or even the new and
impressive books now to be had on this subject.

For solid information of a clear and serious sort, readable and clean,
Dr. Prince Morrow's book, "Social Diseases and Marriage" is the best I
know. Dr. Morrow is the founder of the American Society of Sanitary and
Moral Prophylaxis in New York City; a splendid effort on the part of the
medical profession to spread even to unwilling ears this necessary
knowledge.

The New York Federation of Women's Clubs has lately taken action on the
subject; passing resolutions urging in this state an amendment to the
Domestic Relations law requiring every marriage certificate to be
accompanied by a medical certificate also, certifying the applicant to
be free from contagious disease. This is already required in several
western states. It seems a simple and righteous proposition. If a man
wishes to join the army or navy, or to have his life insured, he has to
pass a physical examination, and is refused if he is unfit. Is not
marriage and parenthood as important as carrying life insurance?

There is a large and growing interest in these matters among intelligent
women; and it is a natural and proper one. If a woman is to unite her
life with a man, she surely has a right to know whether her own life is
to be risked by the union. If she looks forward to motherhood as every
normal woman should, she should be safeguarded from this terrible
possibility.

It is time there was wide, full public knowledge on this subject.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

This from a recent newspaper: "When a reporter called at the address,
Miss Doe or Mrs. Roe appeared in a highly nervous state as a result of
her struggles during the day to keep out of the way of reporters. It
took half an hour's argument to induce her to acknowledge the marriage."

As the whole story treats of this lady's marriage, the calling her
"Miss" appears to be a needlessly elaborate insult; but what seems most
prominent here is the naive brutality of the inquisitor.

Here is a runaway match; the groom being a student and the son of a
somewhat prominent man; it is a bit of gossip, of no general importance
whatever, the publication of which is sure to cause intense distress to
the bride, the groom, the father, and the heads of the institution where
the young man was being educated.

In pursuit of this utterly unnecessary "news" the young bride is hounded
into a "highly nervous condition" by the person hired to meddle in
private affairs for trade purposes. The effect of her previous
"struggle to keep out of the way" is calmly noted by the successful
intruder; he forces himself in where he was not wanted; he remains
admittedly against the will of the occupier; he talks like a book-agent
and wears out the already nervous woman till he makes her "acknowledge
the marriage."

As a personal problem, why should any citizen submit to be exploited in
this manner for trade purposes?

As a public problem, why should any tradesman be allowed to practice
this sort of psychic assault and battery?

The position was well expressed by a wise man as follows: "If the
newspaper is a public business for public service, by what right do
personal owners make fortunes out of it? If it is a personal business
for personal profit, by what right does it meddle with my private
affairs?"

This might be made an extremely debatable question: What right has
anyone to keep to himself some process, drug, or special knowledge of
real value to humanity? Patents or royalties may be allowed, with full
freedom to use, but has he the right to conceal and withhold his
benefaction? Or suppose again, that one has some distinction of no use
to humanity, yet of sufficient interest to the gaping crowd to command a
price for exhibition; if one is a Bearded Lady, say, or a Living
Skeleton, or a Fat Boy, and if one makes a living by exhibiting these
peculiarities and selling one's photograph--then would it be just to
allow any and every photographer to forcibly take one's picture and sell
it?

Further, suppose one has a private history rich in biographical
revelations, and intended to publish the same, after the manner of those
major and minor ego-maniacs of the astounding "confessions"; then is it
right that the public scandal pedlars be allowed to chase their prey
into his or her private house, and by a sort of "third degree" process
wring from the exhausted and irritated victim these biographical
tidbits, that they may go and sell them to their own profit?

"The public is interested in these things," we are gravely told by these
who thus make a living.

The Public might, conceivably, be interested in the table manners of
certain noted persons, or their expressions while shaving, or "doing
their hair."

Is it therefore permissible that dealers in picture post-cards, or
makers of moving picture. shows, come in with cameras at mealtimes or
toilette hours, and photograph the lifted soupspoon, the purchased hair,
or cheek stretched under the razor?

The right of society to the best service of all, we must accept as
paramount; but what right has a private individual to exploit the
secrets of other private individuals merely for his own financial
profit? And how can he claim "social service" as his excuse, when what
he does is no benefit but an injury to society?

Do we not need a wide and thorough revision of our ideas as to social
and personal rights?

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THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
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_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
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dialogue, fable and fantasty, comment and review. It is written
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and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
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AS TO ADVERTISING:

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statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be
true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette,
fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be
answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
_____ 19___ to _____ 19___

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[Advertisement]

TO RENT

A Summer Cottage
on Lake Champlain
Near the Adirondacks

This is a six-room two-story cottage, natural wood finish, unplastered,
on two and a half acres of land, 600 feet on the lake, with an old apple
orchard and many other trees. It has on two sides covered piazzas,
outside blinds, open fireplaces in two rooms; and new white enameled
open plumbing, with hot and cold water. It is about a mile and a half
from Essex Village, and about one-quarter of a mile from the post
office, at the Crater Club, an exclusive summer colony. Access by boat
and train.

I have not seen this cottage, but I've seen plans, elevations and
photographs of it, and of views from it. It stands on a bluff, close to
the lake, the Green Mountains far in the east, and the Adirondacks some
twelve miles to the west. The people who own it will answer further
questions and state facts fully on request, both advantages and
disadvantages.

The list of furnishings is accurate and circumstantial, as follows:

INVENTORY OF CONTENTS OF COTTAGE

LIVING ROOM

Mahogany sofa, small mahogany table
Marble-topped table and "Crowning of Esther"
4 rosewood chairs, steamer chair
Whatnot, wall-bracket, books, basket
Mahogany table, small round 3-legged
Long mantel mirror, gilt frame
3 oil paintings, 3 engravings
Rustic seat (filled with wood)
Old-fashioned heating stove, crated
Candle-lantern, 2 Japanese trays
Door-scraper, woodbasket
Tongs-holder, hearth brush
Child's garden tools
2 sofa cushions
Various small ornaments

KITCHEN

Ironing Table, stand, wax, bosom board
Tin pail, dipper, basin
1 new broom, 1 old broom
Tool box, tools, nails, saw, hatchet
Hammock, barrel hammock, tie ropes
Soap rack, dustpan, scrap basket
Folding hat rack, ladder
Carving set, 6 knives (very old)
Coffee pot, toaster, egg whip, egg beater
5 large white china plates
5 medium and 6 small ditto
6 demi tasse and saucers, same
2 tea cups, 6 saucers, same
2 egg stands, green; 2 sugar bowls
1 butterfly cup and saucer
6 glasses, 1 lemon squeezer
1 mechanical red-glass lamp
2 reading lamps, 3 small hand lamps
3 small bracket lamps, 1 shade
White shades at all windows

GREEN BEDROOM

Green bedstead (three-quarter)
2 mattresses, 2 pillows, madras cover
Green bureau; green washstand
Green table; green rocking chair
Oak chair; 2 pictures; 1 chamber

LARGE EAST BEDROOM

Oak bedstead (double)
Oak bureau, oak washstand
2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster
2 pillows, madras spread
1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow
2 chairs, 2 towel racks
Bureau cover, pen cushion, etc.
3 pictures

SOUTHWEST BEDROOM
Black walnut single bedstead
1 hair mattress and bolster
1 pillow, 1 feather bed, 1 madras spread
Bureau (mirror broken), 2 towel racks
Mahogany washstand, mirror
Small 3-legged table
3 rosewood chairs
Bureau cover, pin cushion, etc.
Shoebag on wall
Oil painting, on copper
Brass stair rods, in closet

NORTHWEST BEDROOM

2 mahogany bureaus, empty trunk
Portable bath-tub, clothes basket
On shelves: 7 sheets, 7 pillow cases
3 table cloths, 10 doilies
4 towels, dish cloths and towels
Bureau and tray cloths
Curtains, enough for doors
Curtains for some windows

Apply to "Summer Cottage," care of The Forerunner or to John B. Burnham,
Agent, Essex, N.Y.

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 7
MAY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Having made pockets, we need not carry so many things in our hands.
Having made books, we need not carry so many things in our heads.

BRAIN SERVICE

We offer our hearts to God, contrite and broken;
Why not offer our brains, whole and alive?
Why follow the grovelling words wailing old races have spoken?
Bow and submit, when we ought to resist and strive!

What is this "heart" that you offer? A circulator,
An organ that quivers and starts at the fears of the hour.
Why not offer your head? And hold it straighter?
Bring to the service of God your noblest power?

When we learn to credit Him with our great ideals, and greater--
When we all stand up at last, stop kissing the rod--
When we bring the brains of to-day to seek and serve the Creator--
God will look better to us, and we shall look better to God.

WHEN I WAS A WITCH

If I had understood the terms of that one-sided contract with Satan, the
Time of Witching would have lasted longer--you may be sure of that. But
how was I to tell? It just happened, and has never happened again,
though I've tried the same preliminaries as far as I could control them.

The thing began all of a sudden, one October midnight--the 30th, to be
exact. It had been hot, really hot, all day, and was sultry and
thunderous in the evening; no air stirring, and the whole house stewing
with that ill-advised activity which always seems to move the steam
radiator when it isn't wanted.

I was in a state of simmering rage--hot enough, even without the weather
and the furnace--and I went up on the roof to cool off. A top-floor
apartment has that advantage, among others--you can take a walk without
the mediation of an elevator boy!

There are things enough in New York to lose one's temper over at the
best of times, and on this particular day they seemed to all happen at
once, and some fresh ones. The night before, cats and dogs had broken
my rest, of course. My morning paper was more than usually mendacious;
and my neighbor's morning paper--more visible than my own as I went down
town--was more than usually salacious. My cream wasn't cream--my egg
was a relic of the past. My "new" napkins were giving out.

Being a woman, I'm supposed not to swear; but when the motorman
disregarded my plain signal, and grinned as he rushed by; when the
subway guard waited till I was just about to step on board and then
slammed the door in my face--standing behind it calmly for some minutes
before the bell rang to warrant his closing--I desired to swear like a
mule-driver.

At night it was worse. The way people paw one's back in the crowd! The
cow-puncher who packs the people in or jerks them out--the men who smoke
and spit, law or no law--the women whose saw-edged cart-wheel hats,
swashing feathers and deadly pins, add so to one's comfort inside.

Well, as I said, I was in a particularly bad temper, and went up on the
roof to cool off. Heavy black clouds hung low overhead, and lightning
flickered threateningly here and there.

A starved, black cat stole from behind a chimney and mewed dolefully.
Poor thing! She had been scalded.

The street was quiet for New York. I leaned over a little and looked up
and down the long parallels of twinkling lights. A belated cab drew
near, the horse so tired he could hardly hold his head up.

Then the driver, with a skill born of plenteous practice, flung out his
long-lashed whip and curled it under the poor beast's belly with a
stinging cut that made me shudder. The horse shuddered too, poor
wretch, and jingled his harness with an effort at a trot.

I leaned over the parapet and watched that man with a spirit of
unmitigated ill-will.

"I wish," said I, slowly--and I did wish it with all my heart--"that
every person who strikes or otherwise hurts a horse unnecessarily, shall
feel the pain intended--and the horse not feel it!"

It did me good to say it, anyhow, but I never expected any result. I
saw the man swing his great whip again, and--lay on heartily. I saw him
throw up his hands--heard him scream--but I never thought what the
matter was, even then.

The lean, black cat, timid but trustful, rubbed against my skirt and
mewed.

"Poor Kitty" I said; "poor Kitty! It is a shame!" And I thought
tenderly of all the thousands of hungry, hunted cats who stink and
suffer its a great city.

Later, when I tried to sleep, and up across the stillness rose the
raucous shrieks of some of these same sufferers, my pity turned cold.
"Any fool that will try to keep a cat in a city!" I muttered, angrily.

Another yell--a pause--an ear-torturing, continuous cry. "I wish," I
burst forth, "that every cat in the city was comfortably dead!"

A sudden silence fell, and in course of time I got to sleep.

Things went fairly well next morning, till I tried another egg. They
were expensive eggs, too.

"I can't help it!" said my sister, who keeps house.

"I know you can't," I admitted. "But somebody could help it. I wish
the people who are responsible had to eat their old eggs, and never get
a good one till they sold good ones!"

"They'd stop eating eggs, that's all," said my sister, "and eat meat."

"Let 'em eat meat!" I said, recklessly. "The meat is as bad as the
eggs! It's so long since we've had a clean, fresh chicken that I've
forgotten how they taste!"

"It's cold storage," said my sister. She is a peaceable sort; I'm not.

"Yes, cold storage!" I snapped. "It ought to be a blessing--to tide
over shortages, equalize supplies, and lower prices. What does it do?
Corner the market, raise prices the year round, and make all the food
bad!"

My anger rose. "If there was any way of getting at them!" I cried.
"The law don't touch 'em. They need to be cursed somehow! I'd like to
do it! I wish the whole crowd that profit by this vicious business
might taste their bad meat, their old fish, their stale milk--whatever
they ate. Yes, and feel the prices as we do!"

"They couldn't you know; they're rich," said my sister.

"I know that," I admitted, sulkily. "There's no way of getting at 'em.
But I wish they could. And I wish they knew how people hated 'em, and
felt that, too--till they mended their ways!"

When I left for my office I saw a funny thing. A man who drove a
garbage cart took his horse by the bits and jerked and wrenched
brutally. I was amazed to see him clap his hands to his own jaws with a
moan, while the horse philosophically licked his chops and looked at
him.

The man seemed to resent his expression, and struck him on the head,
only to rub his own poll and swear amazedly, looking around to see who
had hit him. the horse advanced a step, stretching a hungry nose toward
a garbage pail crowned with cabbage leaves, and the man, recovering his
sense of proprietorship, swore at him and kicked him in the ribs. That
time he had to sit down, turning pale and weak. I watched with growing
wonder and delight.

A market wagon came clattering down the street; the hard-faced young
ruffian fresh for his morning task. He gathered the ends of the reins
and brought them down on the horse's back with a resounding thwack. The
horse did not notice this at all, but the boy did. He yelled!

I came to a place where many teamsters were at work hauling dirt and
crushed stone. A strange silence and peace hung over the scene where
usually the sound of the lash and sight of brutal blows made me hurry
by. The men were talking together a little, and seemed to be exchanging
notes. It was too good to be true. I gazed and marvelled, waiting for
my car.

It came, merrily running along. It was not full. There was one not far
ahead, which I had missed in watching the horses; there was no other
near it in the rear.

Yet the coarse-faced person in authority who ran it, went gaily by
without stopping, though I stood on the track almost, and waved my
umbrella.

A hot flush of rage surged to my face. "I wish you felt the blow you
deserve," said I, viciously, looking after the car. "I wish you'd have
to stop, and back to here, and open the door and apologize. I wish that
would happen to all of you, every time you play that trick."

To my infinite amazement, that car stopped and backed till the front
door was before me. The motorman opened it. holding his hand to his
cheek. "Beg your pardon, madam!" he said.

I passed in, dazed, overwhelmed. Could it be? Could it possibly be
that--that what I wished came true. The idea sobered me, but I
dismissed it with a scornful smile. "No such luck!" said I.

Opposite me sat a person in petticoats. She was of a sort I
particularly detest. No real body of bones and muscles, but the
contours of grouped sausages. Complacent, gaudily dressed, heavily
wigged and ratted, with powder and perfume and flowers and jewels--and a
dog.

A poor, wretched, little, artificial dog--alive, but only so by virtue
of man's insolence; not a real creature that God made. And the dog had
clothes on--and a bracelet! His fitted jacket had a pocket--and a
pocket-handkerchief! He looked sick and unhappy.

I meditated on his pitiful position, and that of all the other poor
chained prisoners, leading unnatural lives of enforced celibacy, cut off
from sunlight, fresh air, the use of their limbs; led forth at stated
intervals by unwilling servants, to defile our streets; over-fed,
under-exercised, nervous and unhealthy.

"And we say we love them!" said I, bitterly to myself. "No wonder they
bark and howl and go mad. No wonder they have almost as many diseases
as we do! I wish--" Here the thought I had dismissed struck me agin.
"I wish that all the unhappy dogs in cities would die at once!"

I watched the sad-eyed little invalid across the car. He dropped his
head and died. She never noticed it till she got off; then she made
fuss enough.

The evening papers were full of it. Some sudden pestilence had struck
both dogs and cats, it would appear. Red headlines struck the eye, big
letters, and columns were filled out of the complaints of those who had
lost their "pets," of the sudden labors of the board of health, and
interviews with doctors.

All day, as I went through the office routine, the strange sense of this
new power struggled with reason and common knowledge. I even tried a
few furtive test "wishes"--wished that the waste basket would fall over,
that the inkstand would fill itself; but they didn't.

I dismissed the idea as pure foolishness, till I saw those newspapers,
and heard people telling worse stories.

One thing I decided at once--not to tell a soul. "Nobody'd believe me
if I did," said I to myself. "And I won't give 'em the chance. I've
scored on cats and dogs, anyhow--and horses."

As I watched the horses at work that afternoon, and thought of all their
unknown sufferings from crowded city stables, bad air and insufficient
food, and from the wearing strain of asphalt pavements in wet and icy
weather, I decided to have another try on horses.

"I wish," said I, slowly and carefully, but with a fixed intensity of
purposes, "that every horse owner, keeper, hirer and driver or rider,
might feel what the horse feels, when he suffers at our hands. Feel it
keenly and constantly till the case is mended."

I wasn't able to verify this attempt for some time; but the effect was
so general that it got widely talked about soon; and this "new wave of
humane feeling" soon raised the status of horses in our city. Also it
diminished their numbers. People began to prefer motor drays--which was
a mighty good thing.

Now I felt pretty well assured in my own mind, and kept my assurance to
my
self. Also I began to make a list of my cherished grudges, with a fine
sense of power and pleasure.

"I must be careful," I said to myself; "very careful; and, above all
things, make the punishment fit the crime."

The subway crowding came to my mind next; both the people who crowd
because they have to, and the people who make them. "I mustn't punish
anybody, for what they can't help," I mused. "But when it's pure
meanness!" Then I bethought me of the remote stockholders, of the more
immediate directors, of the painfully prominent officials and insolent
employees--and got to work.

"I might as well make a good job of it while this lasts," said I to
myself. "It's quite a responsibility, but lots of fun." And I wished
that every person responsible for the condition of our subways might be
mysteriously compelled to ride up and down in them continuously during
rush hours.

This experiment I watched with keen interest, but for the life of me I
could see little difference. There were a few more well-dressed persons
in the crowds, that was all. So I came to the conclusion that the
general public was mostly to blame, and carried their daily punishment
without knowing it.

For the insolent guards and cheating ticket-sellers who give you short
change, very slowly, when you are dancing on one foot and your train is
there, I merely wished that they might feel the pain their victims would
like to give them, short of real injury. They did, I guess.

Then I wished similar things for all manner of corporations and
officials. It worked. It worked amazingly. There was a sudden
conscientious revival all over the country. The dry bones rattled and
sat up. Boards of directors, having troubles enough of their own, were
aggravated by innumerable communications from suddenly sensitive
stockholders.

In mills and mints and railroads, things began to mend. The country
buzzed. The papers fattened. The churches sat up and took credit to
themselves. I was incensed at this; and, after brief consideration,
wished that every minister would preach to his congregation exactly what
he believed and what he thought of them.

I went to six services the next Sunday--about ten minutes each, for two
sessions. It was most amusing. A thousand pulpits were emptied
forthwith, refilled, re-emptied, and so on, from week to week. People
began to go to church; men largely--women didn't like it as well. They
had always supposed the ministers thought more highly of them than now
appeared to be the case.

One of my oldest grudges was against the sleeping-car people; and now I
began to consider them. How often I had grinned and borne it--with
other thousands--submitting helplessly.

Here is a railroad--a common carrier--and you have to use it. You pay
for your transportation, a good round sum.

Then if you wish to stay in the sleeping car during the day, they charge
you another two dollars and a half for the privilege of sitting there,
whereas you have paid for a seat when you bought your ticket. That seat
is now sold to another person--twice sold! Five dollars for twenty-four
hours in a space six feet by three by three at night, and one seat by
day; twenty-four of these privileges to a car--$120 a day for the rent
of the car--and the passengers to pay the porter besides. That makes
$44,800 a year.

Sleeping cars are expensive to build, they say. So are hotels; but they
do not charge at such a rate. Now, what could I do to get even?
Nothing could ever put back the dollars into the millions of pockets;
but it might be stopped now, this beautiful process.

So I wished that all persons who profited by this performance might feel
a shame so keen that they would make public avowal and apology, and, as
partial restitution, offer their wealth to promote the cause of free
railroads!

Then I remembered parrots. This was lucky, for my wrath flamed again.
It was really cooling, as I tried to work out responsibility and adjust
penalties. But parrots! Any person who wants to keep a parrot should
go and live on an island alone with their preferred conversationalist!

There was a huge, squawky parrot right across the street from me, adding
its senseless, rasping cries to the more necessary evils of other
noises.

I had also an aunt with a parrot. She was a wealthy, ostentatious
person, who had been an only child and inherited her money.

Uncle Joseph hated the yelling bird, but that didn't make any difference
to Aunt Mathilda.

I didn't like this aunt, and wouldn't visit her, lest she think I was
truckling for the sake of her money; but after I had wished this time, I
called at the time set for my curse to work; and it did work with a
vengeance. There sat poor Uncle Joe, looking thinner and meeker than
ever; and my aunt, like an overripe plum, complacent enough.

"Let me out!" said Polly, suddenly. "Let me out to take a walk!"

"The clever thing!" said Aunt Mathilda. "He never said that before."

She let him out. Then he flapped up on the chandelier and sat among the
prisms, quite safe.

"What an old pig you are, Mathilda!" said the parrot.

She started to her feet--naturally.

"Born a Pig--trained a Pig--a Pig by nature and education!" said the
parrot. "Nobody'd put up with you, except for your money; unless it's
this long-suffering husband of yours. He wouldn't, if he hadn't the
patience of Job!"

"Hold your tongue!" screamed Aunt Mathilda. "Come down from there!
Come here!"

Polly cocked his head and jingled the prisms. "Sit down, Mathilda!" he
said, cheerfully. "You've got to listen. You are fat and homely and
selfish. You are a nuisance to everybody about you. You have got to
feed me and take care of me better than ever--and you've got to listen
to me when I talk. Pig!"

I visited another person with a parrot the next day. She put a cloth
over his cage when I came in.

"Take it off!" said Polly. She took it off.

"Won't you come into the other room?" she asked me, nervously.

"Better stay here!" said her pet. "Sit still--sit still!"

She sat still.

"Your hair is mostly false," said pretty Poll. "And your teeth--and
your outlines. You eat too much. You are lazy. You ought to exercise,
and don't know enough. Better apologize to this lady for backbiting!
You've got to listen."

The trade in parrots fell off from that day; they say there is no call
for them. But the people who kept parrots, keep them yet--parrots live
a long time.

Bores were a class of offenders against whom I had long borne undying
enmity. Now I rubbed my hands and began on them, with this simple wish:
That every person whom they bored should tell them the plain truth.

There is one man whom I have specially in mind. He was blackballed at a
pleasant club, but continues to go there. He isn't a member--he just
goes; and no one does anything to him.

It was very funny after this. He appeared that very night at a meeting,
and almost every person present asked him how he came there. "You're
not a member, you know," they said. "Why do you butt in? Nobody likes
you."

Some were more lenient with him. "Why don't you learn to be more
considerate of others, and make some real friends?" they said. "To have
a few friends who do enjoy your visits ought to be pleasanter than being
a public nuisance."

He disappeared from that club, anyway.

I began to feel very cocky indeed.

In the food business there was already a marked improvement; and in
transportation. The hubbub of reformation waxed louder daily, urged on
by the unknown sufferings of all the profiters by iniquity.

The papers thrived on all this; and as I watched the loud-voiced
protestations of my pet abomination in journalism, I had a brilliant
idea, literally.

Next morning I was down town early, watching the men open their papers.
My abomination was shamefully popular, and never more so than this
morning. Across the top was printing in gold letters:

All intentional lies, in adv., editorial, news, or any other column. .
.Scarlet
All malicious matter. . .Crimson
All careless or ignorant mistakes. . .Pink
All for direct self-interest of owner. . .Dark green
All mere bait--to sell the paper. . .Bright green
All advertising, primary or secondary. . .Brown
All sensational and salacious matter. . .Yellow
All hired hypocrisy. . .Purple
Good fun, instruction and entertainment. . .Blue
True and necessary news and honest editorials. . .Ordinary print

You never saw such a crazy quilt of a paper. They were bought like hot
cakes for some days; but the real business fell off very soon. They'd
have stopped it all if they could; but the papers looked all right when
they came off the press. The color scheme flamed out only to the
bona-fide reader.

I let this work for about a week, to the immense joy of all the other
papers; and then turned it on to them, all at once. Newspaper reading
became very exciting for a little, but the trade fell off. Even
newspaper editors could not keep on feeding a market like that. The
blue printed and ordinary printed matter grew from column to column and
page to page. Some papers--small, to be sure, but refreshing--began to
appear in blue and black alone.

This kept me interested and happy for quite a while; so much so that I
quite forgot to be angry at other things. There was _such_ a change in
all kinds of business, following the mere printing of truth in the
newspapers. It began to appear as if we had lived in a sort of
delirium--not really knowing the facts about anything. As soon as we
really knew the facts, we began to behave very differently, of course.

What really brought all my enjoyment to an end was women. Being a
woman, I was naturally interested in them, and could see some things
more clearly than men could. I saw their real power, their real
dignity, their real responsibility in the world; and then the way they
dress and behave used to make me fairly frantic. 'Twas like seeing
archangels playing jackstraws--or real horses only used as
rocking-horses. So I determined to get after them.

How to manage it! What to hit first! Their hats, their ugly, inane,
outrageous hats--that is what one thinks of first. Their silly,
expensive clothes--their diddling beads and jewelry--their greedy
childishness--mostly of the women provided for by rich men.

Then I thought of all the other women, the real ones, the vast majority,
patiently doing the work of servants without even a servant's pay--and
neglecting the noblest duties of motherhood in favor of house-service;
the greatest power on earth, blind, chained, untaught, in a treadmill.
I thought of what they might do, compared to what they did do, and my
heart swelled with something that was far from anger.

Then I wished--with all my strength--that women, all women, might
realize Womanhood at last; its power and pride and place in life; that
they might see their duty as mothers of the world--to love and care for
everyone alive; that they might see their dirty to men--to choose only
the best, and then to bear and rear better ones; that they might see
their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work
and happiness!

I stopped, breathless, with shining eyes. I waited, trembling, for
things to happen.

Nothing happened.

You see, this magic which had fallen on me was black magic--and I had
wished white.

It didn't work at all, and, what was worse, it stopped all the other
things that were working so nicely.

Oh, if I had only thought to wish permanence for those lovely
punishments! If only I had done more while I could do it, had half
appreciated my privileges when I was a Witch!

[Untitled]

"I can understand," says Eugene Wood, "how some women want to vote. And
I can understand how some women do not want to vote."

"But I can't understand how some women do not want other women to vote."

BELIEVING AND KNOWING

What is Believing--psychologically? What does the brain do when it
"believes" that is different from what it does when it "knows"?

There is a difference. When you know a thing you don't have to believe
it. There is no effort, and no credit attached, in knowing; but this
act of "believing" has long been held as both difficult and worthy.

There seems to be not only a clearly marked distinction between knowing
and believing, but a direct incompatibility. It may be said roughly
that the less we know the more we believe, and the more we know the less
we believe. The credulity of the child, the savage, and the less
educated classes in society, is in sharp contrast with the relative
incredulity of the adult civilized human, and the more highly educated.

There is a difference also shown in our mental sensations as to a thing
believed and a thing known. If a man tells you that grass is red and
the sky yellow, you merely think him color blind--It does not anger you
nor alter your opinion. If he tells you that two and two make ten, you
think him ignorant, weak-minded, but your view is not changed, nor are
you enraged by him. But if he contradicts you on some religious dogma
you are hurt and angry. Why? As a matter of direct
physicho-psychological action, why?

To make a physical comparison, it is like the difference between being
pushed against when you stand square on your feet, and pushed when you
stand on one leg.

Or again, the thing you know is like something nailed down, or planted
and growing; the thing you believe like something held up by main force,
and quite likely to be joggled or blown away. "Do not try to shake my
faith!" protests the believer. He does not object to your trying to
shake his knowledge.

If the new knowledge you bring him is evidently a matter of fact, if his
brain rationally perceives that he was wrong about this thing, and you
are right, he removes his incorrect idea and establishes the correct
one, with no more disagreeable sensation than a little sense of
shame:--not that, if he was wise enough to admit ignorance gracefully.

But the new faith you bring him is quite another matter. He hangs on to
his old faith as if there was a virtue in the mental attitude of
belief--aha! now we are on the track! He has been taught that there is!

We receive knowledge and faith in quite different ways, with quite
different emphasis. The child learns--and learns--and learns--every day
of his life; learns year after year, as long as his brain is able to
receive impressions. This vast mass of knowledge is for the most part
received indiscriminately and assorted by the brain after its own
fashion.

There are but few departments of knowledge to which we have attached
arbitrary ideas of superiority; and those fortunately, are all old ones.
Knowledge of "the classics" was once kept in the same box with social
standing, if not with orthodoxy; and to this day an error in spelling or
grammar will condemn a person far more than entire ignorance of
physiology or mechanics. Knowledge is a vast range, an unlimited range,
visibly subject to extension; each new peak surmounted showing us many
more. We learn, unlearn, and relearn, without much opposition or
criticism, so long as our little bunch of specialties is assured--the
spelling, for instance.

But when it comes to believing, disbelieving, and rebelieving--that is a
different matter. Certain things were given us to believe--in our
racial infancy--before we knew much of anything, and were therefore far
more capable of believing. These articles of belief were sincerely held
to be the most important matters; and they were too; because, if any
stronger minded race infant refused to believe them, he was
ostracised--or executed. What a man believed, or disbelieved, was the
keynote of life--in that interesting race infancy of ours. All the
other mental processes were as nothing compared to this. Knowledge?
There was none to speak of. Doubt was a crime. Inquiry was the
beginning of doubt.

The dogmas inserted did change, though slowly; but their importance in
the scheme of life did not change. Whatever else the man might or might
not be the first question was, "Art thou a Believer?" And he was. What
he believed might be the One Absolute Truth; or one of many contemptible
heresies; but he was always a believer.

They began with the helpless little children, and told them as the most
important basic truths, whatsoever religious doctrines were current at
the time; and renewed this process with every generation until this very
day--and are still at it. Many of the most pronounced free-thinkers not
only prefer to have their women still "devout," but insist on putting
their children through the old course of instruction.

So, in the course of these unbroken ages; under a combined treatment of
rigid "natural selection"--the elimination of the unfit, who were burned
or beheaded--and of the heaviest social pressure, in both education and
imitation; we have developed in the race mind a special area for
"believing" as distinct front knowing. This area is abnormally
sensitive because in those long ages behind us, it was the very vital
base of life itself. If your Belief was steady and intact, you were
permitted to live. If it was in the least degree wavering you were in
danger. Is it any wonder we object so automatically to anyone's trying
to "shake our faith?"

The change of the last century in this regard has been not only in the
sudden opening up of new fields of knowledge; not only in the adoption
of entire new methods in the acquisition of knowledge; not only in the
rapid popularization of knowledge; but most of all in a new relation of
ideas. We are beginning dimly to grasp something of the real scheme of
life; to get our sense of the basic verities from observation of facts.
That underlying scheme of life which the brain as an organ hungers for,
is now opening to us in the field of ascertained fact.

A broad deep satisfying conception of life may now be gathered from the
open book of natural law, both the perception of and the inspiration to
right living are to be found there; all matters of calm clear easily
held knowledge. When one knows enough to build a working religion on
established facts, one does not have so much need of that extra capacity
of believing.

You may also believe what you know--but it isn't necessary.

It will be a wonderful thing for the world when in every mind the
beautiful truths of life shall be common knowledge. You may believe in
an alleged father you have never seen; but when you live with your
father you know him.

THE KINGDOM

"Where is Heaven?" asked the Person.
"I want Heaven--to enjoy it;
I want Heaven, recompensing
For the evils I have suffered--
All the terrible injustice,
All the foolish waste and hunger--
Where is Heaven? Can I get there?"

Then the Priest expounded Heaven:
"Heaven is a place for dead men;
After you are dead you'll find it,
_If_"--and here the Priest was earnest--
"_If_ you do the things I tell you--
Do exactly what is ordered!
It will cost you quite a little--
You must pay a price for Heaven--
You must pay before you enter."

"Am I sure of what I'm getting?"
Asked the mean, suspicious Person.
"What you urge is disagreeable;
What you ask is quite expensive;
Am I sure of getting Heaven?"

Then the Priest prepared a potion,
Made of Concentrated Ages,
Made of Many Mingled Feelings--
Highest Hope and Deepest Terror--
Mixed our best and worst together,
Reverence and Love and Service,
Coward Fear and rank Self-Interest--
Gave him this when he was little,
Pumped it in before the Person
Could examine his prescription.
So the Person, thus instructed,
Now believed the things he told him;
Paid the price as he was able,
Died--the Priest said, went to Heaven--
None came back to contradict him!

*

"We want Heaven," said the People;
We believe in God and Heaven;
Where God is, there must be Heaven;
God is Here--and this is Heaven."

Then they saw the earth was lovely;
Life was sweet, and love eternal;
Then they learned the joy of living,
Caught a glimpse of what Life might be,
What it could be--should be--would be--
When the People chose to have it!

Then they bought no further tickets
Of the sidewalk speculators;
They no longer gave their children
The "spring medicine" of Grandma.
They said, "We will take no chances
Of what happens after dying;
We perceive that Human Beings,
Wise, and sweet, and brave, and tender,
Strong, and beautiful, and noble,
Living peaceably together,
In a universal garden,
With the Sciences for Soldiers,
With the Allied Arts for Angels,
With the Crafts and Trades for Servants,
With all Nature for the Teacher,
And all People for the Students,
Make a very pleasant Heaven.
We can see and understand it,
We believe we'd really like some;
Now we'll set to work and make it!

So they set to work, together,
In the Faith that rests on Knowledge,
In the Hope that's born of Wisdom.
In the Love that grows with Practise
And proceeded to make Heaven.

*

And God smiled. He had been tired
Of the everlasting dead men,
Of the hungry, grasping dead men;
He had always wanted live ones--
Wanted them to build the Kingdom!

PRIZE CHILDREN

A prosperous farmer, driving a valuable horse, will exhibit with pride
the "points" of his swift roadster--the fine action, the speed and
endurance. He himself sits stoop-shouldered and muscle-bound; strong,
it may be, but slow and awkward, with bad teeth and poor digestion; by
no means a model human being either in "points" or "action."

He never thinks of these things.

A virtuous housewife, running a comfortable house, has a justifiable
pride in the cleanliness, comfort and convenience of the place, in its
beautiful appointments and conveniences, and in her own. fine clothes!
She herself is stout, short-legged, incapable of any swift agility of
action; a brief run leaves her panting; she would be grotesque as a
statue; and her internal housekeeping is by no means as efficient as a
doctor would approve.

She never thinks of these things.

The same farmer will show you his stock--sheep, swine, fowls, cattle;
point out their superiority and talk learnedly of the best methods of
improvement. The same housewife will show you her fine needlework, her
fine cooking, and discuss patterns and recipes with gusto. Both the
farmer and his wife took prizes at the county fair--he for pigs and
poultry, she for pies.

Now look at their children.

She gathers little Johnny into her motherly arms. "Johnny was always
delicate!" she says tenderly. "He's a little backward because he's
delicate. Mother's boy!" And she kisses his smooth head as he nestles
up to her. "Adelaide had better go and lie down. Adelaide's not
strong. They work her too hard in school."

Jim looks sturdy enough, and makes noise enough, but the expert
perceives that Jimmy has adenoids, breathes through his mouth, is really
undersized.

Here is the oldest boy, a tall, heavy fellow; but what a complexion!
"Quite natural for boys of that age; yes, he's real sensitive about it."

*

Well? They are "good children." When properly dressed, they compare
favorably with other people's children.

None of them would take any prizes in an exhibition of Human Stock.
There are no such prizes. As to the exhibition--that is continuous. We
are so used to the exhibition, and to its pitiful average, that we have
no ideals left.

Neither the farmer nor his wife ever thought of a Human Standard;
whether they came up to it, or if their children did, or of how they
might improve the breed.

We take humanity as we find it. We admire "beauty," or what we call
beauty; but we don't care enough for it to try to increase it. We are
concerned about our health after we lose it, but give small thought to
lifting the average. Young men vie with one another in athletic sports,
and have certain ideals, perhaps, of "military bearing," and the kind of
chest and chin a man should have; but all their ideals put together do
not make us as beautiful and strong as we have a right to be.

Then arise those who come to us talking largely of eugenics; wanting us
to breed super-men and super-women; talk[ing of improving] the race by
right selection. There is a lot of sense in this; we could do wonders
that way; of course, if we would. Certain obstacles arise, however.
Men and women seem to love each other on other grounds than physical
superiority. Those physically superior do not always have the most
superior children. Then, again, the physically superior children do not
always hold out through life, somehow.

This method of breeding and selection is nature's way. It works
well--give it a chance; but it has to be accompanied by a ruthless
slaughter of the unfit, and takes thousands upon thousands of years. We
have a method worth two of that.

We can improve the species after it is born.

That's the great human power, the conscious ability to improve ourselves
and our children. We have the power. We have the knowledge, too--some
of us have it, and all of us can get it.

The trouble is, speaking generally, that we haven't the standards.

Here is where our mothers need new ideals, and new information. A
person who is going to raise cattle ought to know something about
cattle; know what to expect of cattle, and how to produce it. Suppose
we had a course in Humaniculture to study. We have Agricultural
colleges; we study Horticulture, and Floriculture, and Apiculture and
Arboriculture. Why not have a Humanicultural College, and learn
something about how to raise people?

Such a course of study would begin with the theory, illustrating by
picture and model; and later should have practical illustration from the
living model, in nursery and school. The graduate from such a course
would have quite a different idea of human standards.

She would know the true proportions of the human body, and not call a
No. 2 foot "beautiful" on a No. 10 body. She would know what the real
shape of the human body is, and that to alter it arbitrarily is a habit
of the lowest savagery. The shape of the body is the result of its
natural activities, and cannot be altered without injury to them. She
would learn that to interfere with the human shape, moulding it to lines
that have nothing to do with the living structure and its complex
functions, is as offensive and ridiculous as it would be to alter the
shape of a horse.

Should we not laugh to see a horse in corsets? The time is coming when
we shall so laugh to see a woman.

She would learn to measure beauty, human beauty, by full health and
vigor first of all, right proportion, full possession of all natural
power, and that the human animal is by nature swift, agile, active to a
high degree, and should remain so throughout life. So trained, she
would regard being "put on a car" by the elbow as an insult, not a
compliment.

Then at last we should begin to have some notion of what to expect in
children, and how to get it. The girl would look forward not merely to
some vague little ones to love and care for, but to having finer
children than anyone else--if she could! And she would naturally have a
new standard of fatherhood, and sternly refuse to accept disease and the
vice which makes disease.

Then, when the children came, she would know the size and weight that
was normal, the way to feed and clothe the little body so as to promote
the best growth; the kind of exercise and training essential to develop
that legitimate human beauty and power which ought to belong to all of
us.

We have our vulgar "Baby Shows," where fat-cheeked, over-fed younglings
are proudly exhibited. A time is coming when, without public
exhibitions, without prize-money or clamorous vote, we shall raise a new
standard in child culture--and live up to it.

HEAVEN FORBID!

When I was seventeen, you'd find
No youth so brash as I;
Things must be settled to my mind,
Or I'd know why!

I knew it all, and somewhat more,
What I believed was true;
The future held no task in store
I could not do!

If I had died in my youthful pride--
And no man can say when--
Should I have been immortal
As I was then? (Heaven forbid!)

When I was forty-two I stood
Successful, proud and strong;
Little I cared for bad or good--
My purse was long.

My breakfast, newspaper and train,--
My office,--the Exchange--
My work, my pleasure, and my gain--
A narrow range.

If I had died in my business pride--
And no man can say when--
Should I have been immortal
As I was then? (Heaven forbid!)

Now I am old, and yet I keep
Intelligent content;
I wake and sleep in the quiet deep
Of disillusionment.

I don't believe, nor disbelieve--
I simply do not know.
I fear no grave--no heaven crave--
Am quite prepared to go.

But when I die--and I would not stay,
Though a friend should show me how,
Shall I become immortal,
As I am now? (Heaven forbid!)

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER VII.

HERESY AND SCHISM.

You may talk about religion with a free and open mind,
For ten dollars you may criticize a judge;
You may discuss in politics the newest thing you find,
And open scientific truth to all the deaf and blind,
But there's one place where the brain must never budge!

CHORUS.

Oh, the Home is Utterly Perfect!
And all its works within!
To say a word about it--
To criticize or doubt it--
To seek to mend or move it--
To venture to improve it--
Is The Unpardonable Sin!

--"Old Song."

Mr. Porne took an afternoon off and came with his wife to hear their
former housemaid lecture. As many other men as were able did the same.
All the members not bedridden were present, and nearly all the guests
they had invited.

So many were the acceptances that a downtown hall had been taken; the
floor was more than filled, and in the gallery sat a block of servant
girls, more gorgeous in array than the ladies below whispering excitedly
among themselves. The platform recalled a "tournament of roses," and,
sternly important among all that fragrant loveliness, sat Mrs. Dankshire
in "the chair" flanked by Miss Torbus, the Recording Secretary, Miss
Massing, the Treasurer, and Mrs. Ree, tremulous with importance in her
official position. All these ladies wore an air of high emprise, even
more intense than that with which they usually essayed their public
duties. They were richly dressed, except Miss Torbus, who came as near
it as she could.

At the side, and somewhat in the rear of the President, on a chair quite
different from "the chair," discreetly gowned and of a bafflingly serene
demeanor, sat Miss Bell. All eyes were upon her--even some opera
glasses.

"She's a good-looker anyhow," was one masculine opinion.

"She's a peach," was another, "Tell you--the chap that gets her is well
heeled!" said a third.

The ladies bent their hats toward one another and conferred in flowing
whispers; and in the gallery eager confidences were exchanged, with
giggles.

On the small table before Mrs. Dankshire, shaded by a magnificent bunch
of roses, lay that core and crux of all parliamentry dignity, the gavel;
an instrument no self-respecting chairwoman may be without; yet which
she still approaches with respectful uncertainty.

In spite of its large size and high social standing, the Orchardina Home
and Culture Club contained some elements of unrest, and when the yearly
election of officers came round there was always need for careful work
in practical politics to keep the reins of government in the hands of
"the right people."

Mrs. Thaddler, conscious of her New York millions, and Madam
Weatherstone, conscious of her Philadelphia lineage, with Mrs. Johnston
A. Marrow ("one of the Boston Marrows!" was awesomely whispered of her),
were the heads of what might be called "the conservative party" in this
small parliament; while Miss Miranda L. Eagerson, describing herself as
'a journalist,' who held her place in local society largely by virtue of
the tacit dread of what she might do if offended--led the more radical
element.

Most of the members were quite content to follow the lead of the solidly
established ladies of Orchard Avenue; especially as this leadership
consisted mainly in the pursuance of a masterly inactivity. When wealth
and aristocracy combine with that common inertia which we dignify as
"conservatism" they exert a powerful influence in the great art of
sitting still.

Nevertheless there were many alert and conscientious women in this large
membership, and when Miss Eagerson held the floor, and urged upon the
club some active assistance in the march of events, it needed all Mrs.
Dankshire's generalship to keep them content with marking time.

On this auspicious occasion, however, both sides were agreed in interest
and approval. Here was a subject appealing to every woman present, and
every man but such few as merely "boarded"; even they had memories and
hopes concerning this question.

Solemnly rose Mrs. Dankshire, her full silks rustling about her, and let
one clear tap of the gavel fall into the sea of soft whispering and
guttural murmurs.

In the silence that followed she uttered the momentous announcements:
"The meeting will please come to order," "We will now hear the reading
of the minutes of the last meeting," and so on most conscientiously
through officer's reports and committees reports to "new business."

Perhaps it is their more frequent practice of religious rites, perhaps
their devout acceptance of social rulings and the dictates of fashion,
perhaps the lifelong reiterance of small duties at home, or all these
things together, which makes women so seriously letter-perfect in
parliamentry usage. But these stately ceremonies were ended in course
of time, and Mrs. Dankshire rose again, even more solemn than before,
and came forward majestically.

"Members---and guests," she said impressively, "this is an occasion
which brings pride to the heart of every member of the Home and Culture
Club. As our name implies, this Club is formed to serve the interests
of The Home--those interests which stand first, I trust, in every human
heart."

A telling pause, and the light patter of gloved hands.

"Its second purpose," pursued the speaker, with that measured delivery
which showed that her custom, as one member put it, was to "first write
and then commit," "is to promote the cause of Culture in this community.
Our aim is Culture in the broadest sense, not only in the curricula of
institutions of learning, not only in those spreading branches of study
and research which tempts us on from height to height"--("proof of
arboreal ancestry that," Miss Eagerson confided to a friend, whose
choked giggle attracted condemning eyes)--"but in the more intimate
fields of daily experience."

"Most of us, however widely interested in the higher education, are
still--and find in this our highest honor--wives and mothers." These
novel titles called forth another round of applause.

"As such," continued Mrs. Dankshire, "we all recognize the
difficult--the well-nigh insuperable problems of the"--she glanced at
the gallery now paying awed attention--"domestic question."

"We know how on the one hand our homes yawn unattended"--("I yawn while
I'm attending--eh?" one gentleman in the rear suggested to his
neighbor)--while on the other the ranks of mercenary labor are
overcrowded. Why is it that while the peace and beauty, the security
and comfort, of a good home, with easy labor and high pay, are open to
every young woman, whose circumstances oblige her to toil for her
living, she blindly refuses these true advantages and loses her health
and too often what is far more precious!--in the din and tumult of the
factory, or the dangerous exposure of the public counter."

Madam Weatherstone was much impressed at this point, and beat her black
fan upon her black glove emphatically. Mrs. Thaddler also nodded; which
meant a good deal from her. The applause was most gratifying to the
speaker, who continued:

"Fortunately for the world there are some women yet who appreciate the
true values of life." A faint blush crept slowly up the face of
Diantha, but her expression was unchanged. Whoso had met and managed a
roomful of merciless children can easily face a woman's club.

"We have with us on this occasion one, as we my say, our equal in birth
and breeding,"--Madam Weatherstone here looked painfully shocked as also
did the Boston Marrow; possibly Mrs. Dankshire, whose parents were Iowa
farmers, was not unmindful of this, but she went on smoothly, "and whose
first employment was the honored task of the teacher; who has
deliberately cast her lot with the domestic worker, and brought her
trained intelligence to bear upon the solution of this great
question--The True Nature of Domestic Service. In the interests of this
problem she has consented to address us--I take pleasure in introducing
Miss Diantha Bell."

Diantha rose calmly, stepped forward, bowed to the President and
officers, and to the audience. She stood quietly for a moment,
regarding the faces before her, and produced a typewritten paper. It
was clear, short, and to some minds convincing.

She set forth that the term "domestic industry" did not define certain
kinds of labor, but a stage of labor; that all labor was originally
domestic; but that most kinds had now become social, as with weaving and
spinning, for instance, for centuries confined to the home and done by
women only; now done in mills by men and women; that this process of
socialization has now been taken from the home almost all the
manufactures--as of wine, beer, soap, candles, pickles and other
specialties, and part of the laundry work; that the other processes of
cleaning are also being socialized, as by the vacuum cleaners, the
professional window-washers, rug cleaners, and similar professional
workers; and that even in the preparation of food many kinds are now
specialized, as by the baker and confectioner. That in service itself
we were now able to hire by the hour or day skilled workers necessarily
above the level of the "general."

A growing rustle of disapproval began to make itself felt, which
increased as she went on to explain how the position of the housemaid is
a survival of the ancient status of woman slavery, the family with the
male head and the group of servile women.

"The keynote of all our difficulty in this relation is that we demand
celibacy of our domestic servants," said Diantha.

A murmur arose at this statement, but she continued calmly:

"Since it is natural for women to marry, the result is that our domestic
servants consist of a constantly changing series of young girls,
apprentices, as it were; and the complicated and important duties of the
household cannot be fully mastered by such hands."

The audience disapproved somewhat of this, but more of what followed.
She showed (Mrs. Porne nodding her head amusedly), that so far from
being highly paid and easy labor, house service was exacting and
responsible, involving a high degree of skill as well as moral
character, and that it was paid less than ordinary unskilled labor, part
of this payment being primitive barter.

Then, as whispers and sporadic little spurts of angry talk increased,
the clear quiet voice went on to state that this last matter, the
position of a strange young girl in our homes, was of itself a source of
much of the difficulty of the situation.

"We speak of giving them the safety and shelter of the home,"--here
Diantha grew solemn;--"So far from sharing our homes, she gives up her
own, and has none of ours, but the poorest of our food and a cramped
lodging; she has neither the freedom nor the privileges of a home; and
as to shelter and safety--the domestic worker, owing to her peculiarly
defenceless position, furnishes a terrible percentage of the
unfortunate."

A shocked silence met this statement.

"In England shop-workers complain of the old custom of 'sleeping
in'--their employers furnishing them with lodging as part payment; this
also is a survival of the old apprentice method. With us, only the
domestic servant is held to this antiquated position."

Regardless of the chill displeasure about her she cheerfully pursued:

"Let us now consider the economic side of the question. 'Domestic
economy' is a favorite phrase. As a matter of fact our method of
domestic service is inordinately wasteful. Even where the wife does all
the housework, without pay, we still waste labor to an enormous extent,
requiring one whole woman to wait upon each man. If the man hires one
or more servants, the wastes increase. If one hundred men undertake
some common business, they do not divide in two halves, each man having
another man to serve him--fifty productive laborers, and fifty cooks.
Two or three cooks could provide for the whole group; to use fifty is to
waste 47 per cent. of the labor.

"But our waste of labor is as nothing to our waste of money. For, say
twenty families, we have twenty kitchens with all their furnishings,
twenty stoves with all their fuel; twenty cooks with all their wages; in
cash and barter combined we pay about ten dollars a week for our
cooks--$200 a week to pay for the cooking for twenty families, for about
a hundred persons!

"Three expert cooks, one at $20 a week and two at $15 would save to
those twenty families $150 a week and give them better food. The cost
of kitchen furnishings and fuel, could be reduced by nine-tenths; and
beyond all that comes our incredible waste in individual purchasing.
What twenty families spend on individual patronage of small retailers,
could be reduced by more than half if bought by competent persons in
wholesale quantities. Moreover, our whole food supply would rise in
quality as well as lower in price if it was bought by experts.

"To what does all this lead?" asked Diantha pleasantly.

Nobody said anything, but the visible attitude of the house seemed to
say that it led straight to perdition.

"The solution for which so many are looking is no new scheme of any
sort; and in particular it is not that oft repeated fore-doomed failure
called "co-operative housekeeping."

At this a wave of relief spread perceptibly. The irritation roused by
those preposterous figures and accusations was somewhat allayed. Hope
was relit in darkened countenances.

"The inefficiency of a dozen tottering households is not removed by
combining them," said Diantha. This was of dubious import. "Why should
we expect a group of families to "keep house" expertly and economically
together, when they are driven into companionship by the fact that none
of them can do it alone."

Again an uncertain reception.

"Every family is a distinct unit," the girl continued. "Its needs are
separate and should be met separately. The separate house and garden
should belong to each family, the freedom and group privacy of the home.
But the separate home may be served by a common water company, by a
common milkman, by a common baker, by a common cooking and a common
cleaning establishment. We are rapidly approaching an improved system
of living in which the private home will no more want a cookshop on the
premises than a blacksmith's shop or soap-factory. The necessary work
of the kitchenless house will be done by the hour, with skilled labor;
and we shall order our food cooked instead of raw. This will give to
the employees a respectable well-paid profession, with their own homes
and families; and to the employers a saving of about two-thirds of the
expense of living, as well as an end of all our difficulties with the
servant question. That is the way to elevate--to enoble domestic
service. It must cease to be domestic service--and become world
service."

Suddenly and quietly she sat down.

Miss Eagerson was on her feet. So were others.

"Madam President! Madam President!" resounded from several points at
once. Madam Weatherstone--Mrs. Thaddler--no! yes--they really were both
on their feet. Applause was going on--irregularly--soon dropped. Only,
from the group in the gallery it was whole-hearted and consistent.

Mrs. Dankshire, who had been growing red and redder as the paper
advanced, who had conferred in alarmed whispers with Mrs. Ree, and Miss
Massing, who had even been seen to extend her hand to the gavel and
finger it threateningly, now rose, somewhat precipitately, and came
forward.

"Order, please! You will please keep order. You have heard the--we
will now--the meeting is now open for discussion, Mrs. Thaddler!" And
she sat down. She meant to have said Madam Weatherstone, by Mrs.
Thaddler was more aggressive.

"I wish to say," said that much beaded lady in a loud voice, "that I was
against this--unfortunate experiment--from the first. And I trust it
will never be repeated!" She sat down.

Two tight little dimples flickered for an instant about the corners of
Diantha's mouth.

"Madam Weatherstone?" said the President, placatingly.

Madam Weatherstone arose, rather sulkily, and looked about her. An
agitated assembly met her eye, buzzing universally each to each.

"Order!" said Mrs. Dankshire, "ORDER, please!" and rapped three times
with the gavel.

"I have attended many meetings, in many clubs, in many states," said
Madam Weatherstone, "and have heard much that was foolish, and some
things that were dangerous. But I will say that never in the course of
all my experience have I heard anything so foolish and so dangerous, as
this. I trust that the--doubtless well meant--attempt to throw light on
this subject--from the wrong quarter--has been a lesson to us all. No
club could survive more than one such lamentable mistake!" And she sat
down, gathering her large satin wrap about her like a retiring Caesar.

"Madam President!" broke forth Miss Eagerson. "I was up first--and have
been standing ever since--"

"One moment, Miss Eagerson," said Mrs. Dankshire superbly, "The Rev. Dr.
Eltwood."

If Mrs. Dankshire supposed she was still further supporting the cause of
condemnation she made a painful mistake. The cloth and the fine bearing
of the young clergyman deceived her; and she forgot that he was said to
be "advanced" and was new to the place.

"Will you come to the platform, Dr. Eltwood?"

Dr. Eltwood came to the platform with the easy air of one to whom
platforms belonged by right.

"Ladies," he began in tones of cordial good will, "both employer and
employed!--and gentlemen--whom I am delighted to see here to-day! I am
grateful for the opportunity so graciously extended to me"--he bowed six
feet of black broadcloth toward Mrs. Dankshire--"by your honored
President.

"And I am grateful for the opportunity previously enjoyed, of listening
to the most rational, practical, wise, true and hopeful words I have
ever heard on this subject. I trust there will be enough open-minded
women--and men--in Orchardina to make possible among us that higher
business development of a great art which has been so convincingly laid
before us. This club is deserving of all thanks from the community for
extending to so many the privilege of listening to our valued
fellow-citizen--Miss Bell."

He bowed again--to Miss Bell--and to Mrs. Dankshire, and resumed his
seat, Miss Eagerson taking advantage of the dazed pause to occupy the
platform herself.

"Mr. Eltwood is right!" she said. "Miss Bell is right! This is the
true presentation of the subject, 'by one who knows.' Miss Bell has
pricked our pretty bubble so thoroughly that we don't know where we're
standing--but she knows! Housework is a business--like any other
business--I've always said so, and it's got to be done in a business
way. Now I for one--" but Miss Eagerson was rapped down by the
Presidential gavel; as Mrs. Thaddler, portentous and severe, stalked
forward.

"It is not my habit to make public speeches," she began, "nor my desire;
but this is a time when prompt and decisive action needs to be taken.
This Club cannot afford to countenance any such farrago of mischievous
nonsense as we have heard to-day. I move you, Madam President, that a
resolution of condemnation be passed at once; and the meeting then
dismissed!"

She stalked back again, while Mrs. Marrow of Boston, in clear, cold
tones seconded the motion.

But another voice was heard--for the first time in that assembly--Mrs.
Weatherstone, the pretty, delicate widower daughter-in-law of Madam
Weatherstone, was on her feet with "Madam President! I wish to speak to
this motion."

"Won't you come to the platform, Mrs. Weatherstone?" asked Mrs.
Dankshire graciously, and the little lady came, visibly trembling, but
holding her head high.

All sat silent, all expected--what was not forthcoming.

"I wish to protest, as a member of the Club, and as a woman, against the
gross discourtesy which has been offered to the guest and speaker of the
day. In answer to our invitation Miss Bell has given us a scholarly and
interesting paper, and I move that we extend her a vote of thanks."

"I second the motion," came from all quarters.

"There is another motion before the house," from others.

Cries of "Madam President" arose everywhere, many speakers were on their
feet. Mrs. Dankshire tapped frantically with the little gavel, but Miss
Eagerson, by sheer vocal power, took and held the floor.

"I move that we take a vote on this question," she cried in piercing
tones. "Let every woman who knows enough to appreciate Miss Bell's
paper--and has any sense of decency--stand up!"

Quite a large proportion of the audience stood up--very informally.
Those who did not, did not mean to acknowledge lack of intelligence and
sense of decency, but to express emphatic disapproval of Miss Eagerson,
Miss Bell and their views.

"I move you, Madam President," cried Mrs. Thaddler, at the top of her
voice, "that every member who is guilty of such grossly unparlimentary
conduct be hereby dropped from this Club!"

"We hereby resign!" cried Miss Eagerson. "_We_ drop _you!_ We'll have
a New Woman's Club in Orchardina with some warmth in its heart and some
brains in its head--even if it hasn't as much money in its pocket!"

Amid stern rappings, hissings, cries of "Order--order," and frantic
"Motions to adjourn" the meeting broke up; the club elements dissolving
and reforming into two bodies as by some swift chemical reaction.

Great was the rejoicing of the daily press; some amusement was felt,
though courteously suppressed by the men present, and by many not
present, when they heard of it.

Some ladies were so shocked and grieved as to withdraw from club-life
altogether. Others, in stern dignity, upheld the shaken standards of
Home and Culture; while the most conspicuous outcome of it all was the
immediate formation of the New Woman's Club of Orchardina.

THE HOUSE OF APPLES

There was a certain King; young and inexperienced, but a man of resource
and initiative; an efficacious King if he did but know it. Being new to
his business, however, he did not, as yet, exert himself particularly.

This King, as it happened, was mightily fond of apples; but he was, as
aforesaid, youthful and inexperienced; and too much overwhelmed with new
duties, glories, and responsibilities, to be very exacting.

As a matter of expediency his stewards and servants strove to please
him. As a matter of course they gave him what he wanted, when they
could. As a matter of fact his table was provided with the best the
market could afford.

The market, however, could not afford to do very well; at least its
products did not satisfy the King.

"What is the trouble with these apples!" said the King, "Bring me
another kind!"

They brought him several kinds--as many as three or four.

"Bring me more kinds!" said the King.

"These are all that the market affords, O King," they replied.

"Confound the market!" said the King, "I will consider this business
myself."

Then the King consulted his books about apples; and the heads of
departments in his Bureaus of horticulture and of Commerce. Having thus
added to his information, he then went out to study the facts; and he
found that the facts were these:

Apples grew as easily as ever they did; and there were really more kinds
instead of less. People liked apples as well as ever they did, and
there were more people instead of less.

Yet in the country the orchards were neglected and the apples fed to
pigs or left to rot; and in the city, the fruit-stalls were loaded with
the monotonous tasteless apples of commerce, cold-stored from time
unknown; and those that were cheap were nasty, and those that were not
nasty and not cheap were by mo means as high in quality as they were in
price.

Then the King issued a Mandate, ordering his subjects far and wide to
send him samples of all kinds of apples that were grown; with their
names and histories and habits.

After this he made a tour of state, visiting his kingdom far and wide,
and studying Appleculture in every quarter. And he consulted the people
separately, in different places, saying, "Why do you not raise more
apples of this sort and of this?"

And with one accord the people answered him--"It does not pay!"

This his Financial Advisers explained to him, outwardly with deep
respect, but inwardly with derision at his inexperience, that there was
no market for these varieties of apples, and they discoursed on The Law
of Supply and Demand.

Then the King called upon his people to write everyone a postal card to
him, stating the kind of apples they would buy if they could; and how
many barrels or bushels or pecks or quarts they would like to use in a
season, if the price was $2.00 a barrel, or five cents a quart.

This furnished employment to many mathematicians and staticians and
tabulators for many days; but when all was done the King found that the
desire of his people for apples averaged a barrel apiece per year. And
the King briskly multiplied the number of his people by the price of a
barrel of apples, and obtained a great sum.

"Ah!" said the King. "This is 'The Market,' is it not?"

But his Financial Advisers laughed in their sleeves, saying solemnly to
him. "No, O King--this is merely an estimate of the idle desires of the
people--with two large Ifs in it."

"But this is 'the Demand' is it not?" said the King.

And his Financial Advisers put down their sleeves and said, "No, O King
this is but a desire--not a demand."

But the King was fond of apples, and obstinate.

So he caused to be built in every city a House of Apples; and appointed
to each an Apple-Master, to carry out his will. And he commanded all
his common carriers to carry apples in their season, so many carloads to
a city, according to the desires of his people. And he offered to all
fruit-raisers, from the humble Farmer to the haughty Horticulturist,
such and such a price for such and such apples; the number thereof to
increase as the population increased from year to year.

In the House of Apples was an Exhibition Hall, showing waxen examples of
every Apple upon earth; and a market where Apples were sold; the
short-lived Apples in their season, and the long-lived Apples the year
around, and some were costly and some were cheap; and in the autumn the
market was flooded--so that then all people could buy apples for a
song--to their hearts' content and their bodies' comfort.

Golden Porters, crystalline and winy, were to be had in their brief
season; and succulent sweetings, to bake with molasses; and
gilliflowers, purple and mealy, and little scarlet sapsons, of which one
eats without counting. Then the people bought more even than they had
intended; and the farms found apples were a paying crop and cultivated
them; and the common carriers lost nothing, for their carrying grew
greater and the payment was steady and sure.

Now the King was really pleased at this, for he loved Apples and he
loved having his own way--as Kings do. Also he delighted in the
glorious array of Apples in his Houses; to look at, to eat, and to
smell.

"It is worth the Price!" said the King. "I know what I want and I'm
willing to pay for it."

But when the Reports of The Apple Masters came in, Lo! There was a
Great Profit for the King.

"There is no harm in that!" said he. And he showed the report to his
Financial Advisers--and his sleeve was across his mouth.

And the name of that King was Demos.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

VII.

ETHICS AND RELIGION.

The laws of physics were at work before we were on earth, and continued
to work on us long before we had intelligence enough to perceive, much
less understand, them. Our proven knowledge of these processes
constitutes "the science of physics"; but the laws were there before the
science.

Physics is the science of material relation, how things and natural
forces work with and on one another. Ethics is the science of social
relation, how persons and social forces work with and on one another.

Ethics is to the human world what physics is to the material world;
ignorance of ethics leaves us in the same helpless position in regard to
one another that ignorance of physics left us in regard to earth, air,
fire and water.

To be sure, people lived and died and gradually improved, while yet
ignorant of the physical sciences; they developed a rough "rule of
thumb" method, as animals do, and used great forces without
understanding them. But their lives were safer and their improvement
more rapid as they learned more, and began to make servants of the
forces which had been their masters.

We have progressed, lamely enough, with terrible loss and suffering,
from stark savagery to our present degree of civilization; we shall go
on more safely and swiftly when we learn more of the science of ethics.

Let us note first that while the underlying laws of ethics remain steady
and reliable, human notions of them have varied widely and still do so.
In different races, ages, classes, sexes, different views of ethics
obtain; the conduct of the people is modified by their views, and their
prosperity is modified by their conduct.

Primitive man became very soon aware that conduct was of importance. As
consciousness increased, with the power to modify action from within,
instead of helplessly reacting to stimuli from without, there arose the
crude first codes of ethics, the "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" of
the blundering savage. It was mostly "Thou shalt not." Inhibition, the
checking of an impulse proven disadvantageous, was an earlier and easier
form of action than the later human power to consciously decide on and
follow a course of action with no stimulus but one's own will.

Primitive ethics consists mostly of Tabus--the things that are
forbidden; and all our dim notions of ethics to this day, as well as
most of our religions, deal mainly with forbidding.

This is almost the whole of our nursery government, to an extent shown
by the well-worn tale of the child who said her name was "Mary." "Mary
what?" they asked her. And she answered, "Mary Don't." It is also the
main body of our legal systems--a complex mass of prohibitions and
preventions. And even in manners and conventions, the things one should
not do far outnumber the things one should. A general policy of
negation colors our conceptions of ethics and religion.

When the positive side began to be developed, it was at first in purely
arbitrary and artificial form. The followers of a given religion were
required to go through certain motions, as prostrating themselves,
kneeling, and the like; they were required to bring tribute to the gods
and their priests, sacrifices, tithes, oblations; they were set little
special performances to go through at given times; the range of things
forbidden was broad; the range of things commanded was narrow. The
Christian religion, practically interpreted, requires a fuller "change
of heart" and change of life than any preceding it; which may account at
once for its wide appeal to enlightened peoples, and to its scarcity of
application.

Again, in surveying the field, it is seen that as our grasp of ethical
values widened, as we called more and more acts and tendencies "right"
and "wrong," we have shown astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in our
judgment. Not only in our religions, which have necessarily upheld each
its own set of prescribed actions as most "right," and its own special
prohibitions as most "wrong"; but in our beliefs about ethics and our
real conduct, we have varied absurdly.

Take, for instance, the ethical concept among "gentlemen" a century or
so since, which put the paying of one's gambling debts as a well-nigh
sacred duty, and the paying of a tradesman who had fed and clothed one
as a quite negligible matter. If the process of gambling was of social
service, and the furnishing of food and clothes was not, this might be
good ethics; but as the contrary is true, we have to account for this
peculiar view on other grounds.

Again, where in Japan a girl, to maintain her parents, is justified in
leading a life of shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard difficult
for Western minds to appreciate. Yet in such an instance as is
described in "Auld Robin Gray," we see precisely the same code; the
girl, to benefit her parents, marries a rich old man she does not
love--which is to lead a life of shame. The ethical view which
justifies this, puts the benefit of parents above the benefit of
children, robs the daughter of happiness and motherhood, injures
posterity to assist ancestors.

This is one of the products of that very early religion, ancestor
worship; and here we lay a finger on a distinctly masculine influence.

We know little of ethical values during the matriarchate; whatever they
were, they must have depended for sanction on a cult of promiscuous but
efficient maternity. Our recorded history begins in the patriarchal
period, and it is its ethics alone which we know.

The mother instinct, throughout nature, is one of unmixed devotion, of
love and service, care and defence, with no self-interest. The animal
father, in such cases as he is of service to the young, assists the
mother in her work in similar fashion. But the human father in the
family with the male head soon made that family an instrument of desire,
and combat, and self-expression, following the essentially masculine
impulses. The children were his, and if males, valuable to serve and
glorify him. In his dominance over servile women and helpless children,
free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise of
irresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check for
thousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy to
trace much of the bias of our early ethical concepts.

Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here that the effort of this book is
by no means to attribute a wholly evil influence to men, and a wholly
good one to women; it is not even claimed that a purely feminine culture
would have advanced the world more successfully. It does claim that the
influence of the two together is better than that of either one alone;
and in especial to point out what special kind of injury is due to the
exclusive influence of one sex heretofore.

We have to-day reached a degree of human development where both men and
women are capable of seeing over and across the distinctions of sex, and
mutually working for the advancement of the world. Our progress is,
however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculine tradition,
the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this long
androcentric period; and it is well worth while, in the interests of
both sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the predominance of one.

We have in our ethics not only a "double standard" in one special line,
but in nearly all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally deified his own
qualities rather than those of his opposite. In his codes of manners,
of morals, of laws, in his early concepts of God, his ancient religions,
we see masculinity written large on every side. Confining women wholly
to their feminine functions, he has required of them only what he called
feminine virtues, and the one virtue he has demanded, to the complete
overshadowing of all others, is measured by wholly masculine
requirements.

ln the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves its
superiority in our race as it has in others. It is essential to the
best growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chastity; it is a
human virtue, not a feminine one. But in masculine hands this virtue
was enforced upon women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quite
ignored by men. Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts,
always dominated by sex, has at once recognized the value of chastity in
the woman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is
wrong; and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which is
ridiculous.

Ethical laws are laws--not idle notions. Chastity is a virtue because
it promotes human welfare--not because men happen to prize it in women
and ignore it themselves. The underlying reason for the whole thing is
the benefit of the child; and to that end a pure and noble fatherhood is
requisite, as well as such a motherhood. Under the limitations of a too
masculine ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditions
which would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible.

Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out this attitude. The immense
human need of religion, the noble human character of the great religious
teachers, has always set its standards, when first established, ahead of
human conduct.

Some there are, men of learning and authority, who hold that the
deadening immobility of our religions, their resistance to progress and
relentless preservation of primitive ideals, is due to the conservatism
of women. Men, they say, are progressive by nature; women are
conservative. Women are more religious than men, and so preserve old
religious forms unchanged after men have outgrown them.

If we saw women in absolute freedom, with a separate religion devised by
women, practiced by women, and remaining unchanged through the
centuries; while men, on the other hand, bounded bravely forward, making
new ones as fast as they were needed, this belief might be maintained.
But what do we see? All the old religions made by men, and forced on
the women whether they liked it or not. Often women not even considered
as part of the scheme--denied souls--given a much lower place in the
system--going from the service of their father's gods to the service of
their husbands--having none of their own. We see religions which make
practically no place for women, as with the Moslem, as rigidly bigoted
and unchanging as any other.

We see also this: that the wider and deeper the religion, the more
human, the more it calls for practical applications in Christianity--the
more it appeals to women. Further, in the diverging sects of the
Christian religion, we find that its progressiveness is to be measured,
not by the numbers of its women adherents, but by their relative
freedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, who
follow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leave
them all as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remain
contented Romanists, but in America the status of women is higher.

The fact is this: a servile womanhood is in a state of arrested
development, and as such does form a ground for the retention of ancient
ideas. But this is due to the condition of servility, not to womanhood.
That women at present are the bulwark of the older forms of our
religions is due to the action of two classes of men: the men of the
world, who keep women in their restricted position, and the men of the
church, who take every advantage of the limitations of women. When we
have for the first time in history a really civilized womanhood, we can
then judge better of its effect on religion.

Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the effect of manhood. Keeping in
mind those basic masculine impulses--desire and combat--we see them
reflected from high heaven in their religious concepts. Reward!
Something to want tremendously and struggle to achieve! This is a
concept perfectly masculine and most imperfectly religious. A religion
is partly explanation--a theory of life; it is partly emotion--an
attitude of mind, it is partly action--a system of morals. Man's
special effect on this large field of human development is clear. He
pictured his early gods as like to himself, and they behaved in
accordance with his ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest
the matriarchate, we find great goddesses--types of Motherhood,
Mother-love, Mother-care and Service. But under masculine dominance,
Isis and Ashteroth dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite--not Womanhood
for the child and the World--but the incarnation of female
attractiveness for man.

As the idea of heaven developed in the man's mind it became the Happy
Hunting Ground of the savage, the beery and gory Valhalla of the
Norseman, the voluptuous, many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohammedan.
These are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting,
beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may be
said that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned for
men. That is trite, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had so
compelling an attraction for them.

Very early in his vague efforts towards religious expression, man voiced
his second strongest instinct--that of combat. His universe is always
dual, always a scene of combat. Born with that impulse, exercising it
continually, he naturally assumed it to be the major process in life.
It is not. Growth is the major process. Combat is a useful subsidiary
process, chiefly valuable for its initial use, to transmit the physical
superiority of the victor. Psychic and social advantages are not thus
secured or transmitted.

In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thought
more clearly shown than in the general deification of what are now
described as "conflict stimuli." That which is true of the male
creature as such is assumed to be true of life in general; quite
naturally, but by no means correctly. To this universal masculine error
we may trace in the field of religion and ethics the great devil theory,
which has for so long obscured our minds. A God without an Adversary
was inconceivable to the masculine mind. From this basic misconception
we find all our ideas of ethics distorted; that which should have been
treated as a group of truths to be learned and habits to be cultivated
was treated in terms of combat, and moral growth made an everlasting
battle. This combat theory we may follow later into our common notions
of discipline, government, law and punishment; here is it enough to see
its painful effects in this primary field of ethics and religion?

The third essential male trait of self-expression we may follow from its
innocent natural form in strutting cock or stamping stag up to the
characteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of women in
forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration as a
means of livelihood, has carried with the concomitant of personal
vanity: but to this day and at their worst we do not find in women the
_naive_ exultant glow of pride which swells the bosom of the men who
march in procession with brass bands, in full regalia of any sort, so
that it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all.

It is this purely masculine spirit which has given to our early concepts
of Deity the unadmirable qualities of boundless pride and a thirst for
constant praise and prostrate admiration, characteristics certainly
unbefitting any noble idea of God. Desire, combat and self-expression
all have had their unavoidable influence on masculine religions. What
deified Maternity a purely feminine culture might have put forth we do
not know, having had none such. Women are generally credited with as
much moral sense as men, and as much religious instinct; but so far it
has had small power to modify our prevailing creeds.

As a matter of fact, no special sex attributes should have any weight in
our ideas of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are distinctly human
concerns; they belong to us as social factors, not as physical ones. As
we learn to recognize our humanness, and to leave our sex
characteristics where they belong, we shall at last learn something
about ethics as a simple and practical science, and see that religions
grow as the mind grows to formulate them.

If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily grasped proof of our ethics,
it is to be found in a popular proverb. Struggling upward from beast
and savage into humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and striven to
attain various human virtues.

He was willing to check many primitive impulses, to change many
barbarous habits, to manifest newer, nobler powers. Much he would
concede to Humanness, but not his sex--that was beyond the range of
Ethics or Religion. By the state of what he calls "morals," and the
laws he makes to regulate them, by his attitude in courtship and in
marriage, and by the gross anomaly of militarism, in all its senseless
waste of life and wealth and joy, we may perceive this little masculine
exception:

"All's fair in love and war."

COMMENT AND REVIEW

"Inspired Millionaires," by Gerald Stanley Lee, has certainly inspired
one. We read among the quoted letters on the paper cover one from Mr.
Joseph Fels saying, "I want twenty-five copies of the book to distribute
among the millionaires here. If the books are well received I will
increase the order."

The impression to the lay mind, not too profusely acquainted with
millionaires, is of amazement at his opportunities; twenty-five among
"the millionaires here," and a possible demand for more!

The impression deepens as we read Mr. Fels' second letter, "Please send
fifty more copies. I am putting them where they tell."

Seventy-five millionaires "here"--wherever that was; and in other places
more and more and even more of them! Among so many there must be some
common humanity, possibly some uncommon humanity; it would appear as if
Mr. Lee might be right.

He believes that a millionaire may be a good man, a social enthusiast,
an artist and connoisseur, not in spite of his money, but because of it;
not by giving it away, pre- or post mortem; but by using it _in his
business_.

This is a simple thought after you see it; but it has been generally
overlooked. Mr. Lee has clear eyes and a silver tongue. His
perceptions are important and his expressions convincing. He speaks
plainly also, calling some millionaires by name, and designating others
almost as plainly.

"What could be more pathetic, for instance," he says, "than Mr. ----- as
an educator--a man who is educating-and-mowing-down two hundred thousand
(?) men a day, ten hours a day, for forty years of their lives; that is,
who is separating the souls of his employees from their work, bullying
them into being linked with a work and a method they despise, and who is
trying to atone for it all--this vast terrible schooling, ten hours a
fay, forty years, two hundred thousand men's lives--by piecing together
professors and scholars, putting up a little playhouse of learning,
before the world, to give a few fresh young boys and girls four years
with paper books?--a man the very thought of whom has ruined more men
and devastated more faiths and created more cowards and brutes and fools
in all walks of life than any other influence in the nineteenth century,
and who is trying to eke out at last a spoonful of atonement for it
all--all this vast baptism of the business world in despair and force
and cursing and pessimism, by perching up before it ----- University,
like a dove cote on a volcano.

"It may blur people's eyes for a minute, but everyone really knows in
his heart--every man in this nation--that the only real education Mr.
----- has established, or ever can establish, is the way he has made his
money. Everyone knows also that the only possible, the only real
education Mr. ----- can give to a man would have to be through the daily
thing he gives the man to do, ten hours a day, through the way he lets
him do it, through the spirit and expression he allows him to put into
it ten hours a day. Mr. -----'s real school, the one with two hundred
thousand men in it, and eighty million helpless spectators in the
galleries, is a school which is working out a daily, bitter, lying curse
upon the rich, and a bitter, lying curse upon the poor, which it is
going to take the world generations to redeem."

This is a long quotation; but it shows our prophet is not blinded by
sentiment; he knows an un-inspired millionaire when he sees him.

He makes this observation of one of the first important acts of Governor
Hughes. "He did one of the most memorable and enlightened silences that
has ever been done by any man in the United States." And then he goes
on to show the power that lies in simply being right.

There are plenty of epigrams in the book, plenty of imagination, plenty
of hard sense; and some mistakes. Various readers will assort these to
suit their several minds. But it is funny, having so many men, with so
much money, and so little idea of what to do with it, is it not?

Why shouldn't they, or some of them at least, really do business with it
as Mr. Lee suggests?

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

Question:--What can one do with a bore? I am not over strong, and very
sensitive to people. When some people come to see me--and stay--and
they always do stay--it makes me ill--I cannot work well next day.

--Sufferer.

Answer:--My dear Sufferer. Your problem is a serious one. Bores are
disagreeable to all and dangerous to some. They cannot be arrested or
imprisoned; and kerosene does not lessen their numbers. They commit no
active offence--it is not by doing that they affect us so painfully, but
simply by being. Especially by being there.

Sub-question:--Can a bore be a bore when no one else is present.

Sub-answer:--We suspect they can. It is because he bores himself when
alone that he seeks continually to bore others.

Yet some of them are well-intentioned persons who would be grieved to
know they were injurious. Even the dull and thick-skinned are open to
offence if it is forced upon them.

We suspect that the only real cure is courage on the part of the victim.
If the suffering host or hostess frankly said, "My dear Sir--or
Madam--you are making me very tired. I wish you would go away," the
result would leave nothing to be desired. "But," says the sufferer in
alarm, "they would never come to see us again!"

Well. Do you want them to?

"But--sometimes I like to see them." Or, "I cannot afford to quarrel
with So and So!"

Ah! We will now quote Emerson. "It you want anything, pay for it and
take it, says God."

Question:--"I have a sick parent. What is my whole duty in the case?"

--Filial Devotee.

Answer:--It depends on your sex. If you are a man, your duty is to
provide a home for the patient, a servant, a nurse, a physician, food,
medicine, and two short calls a day. You will be called "A Devoted
Son."

If you are a woman, you need provide none of these things; but must wait
upon the patient with your own hands as nurse and servant; regardless of
your special ability. If you do at does a devoted son you will be
called "An Unnatural Daughter."

Question:--"Why do the shapes of shoes change from year to year? Surely
the shapes of our feet do not.

Answer:--This is one of the inscrutable minor problems of Fashion and
The Market. The desire for novelty; the lack of a real feeling for
beauty; a savage indifference to physical comfort, the pressure of
necessity or greediness urging the manufacturer to sell more shoes than
people need; the brow-beaten submissiveness of most purchasers and the
persuasive--or insolent--compulsion of salesmen; all these combine to
make our feet ugly and painful.

SUFFRAGE

I became an advocate of full suffrage for women as soon as I was old
enough to understand the value of democratic government, to see that a
true democracy requires the intelligent participation of all the people,
and that women are people. With further knowledge I advocate woman
suffrage on two grounds: first because a dependent and servile womanhood
is an immovable obstacle to race development; second because the major
defects of our civilization are clearly traceable to the degradation of
the female and the unbalanced predominance of the male, which unnatural
relation is responsible for the social evil, for the predatory and
combative elements in our economic processes, and for that colossal
mingling of folly, waste, and horror, that wholly masculine
phenomenon--war.

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THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon;
dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

_What is it For?_ It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage
and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
make.

_What is it about?_ It is about people, principles, and the questions
of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives
a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

_Is it a Woman's magazine?_ It will treat all three phases of our
existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true
place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important
citizen.

_Is it a Socialist Magazine?_ It is a magazine for humanity, and
humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is
part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious
humanity is to promote Socialization.

_Why is it published?_ It is published to express ideas which need a
special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons
interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser."
The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this
authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will
be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual
experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description
command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be
useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own
statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be
true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette,
fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be
answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
_____ 19___ to _____ 19___

__________

__________

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TO RENT

A Summer Cottage
on Lake Champlain
Near the Adirondacks

This is a six-room two-story cottage, natural wood finish, unplastered,
on two and a half acres of land, 600 feet on the lake, with an old apple
orchard and many other trees. It has on two sides covered piazzas,
outside blinds, open fireplaces in two rooms; and new white enameled
open plumbing, with hot and cold water. It is about a mile and a half
from Essex Village, and about one-quarter of a mile from the post
office, at the Crater Club, an exclusive summer colony. Access by boat
and train.

I have not seen this cottage, but I've seen plans, elevations and
photographs of it, and of views from it. It stands on a bluff, close to
the lake, the Green Mountains far in the east, and the Adirondacks some
twelve miles to the west. The people who own it will answer further
questions and state facts fully on request, both advantages and
disadvantages.

The list of furnishings is accurate and circumstantial, as follows:

INVENTORY OF CONTENTS OF COTTAGE

LIVING ROOM

Mahogany sofa, small mahogany table
Marble-topped table and "Crowning of Esther"
4 rosewood chairs, steamer chair
Whatnot, wall-bracket, books, basket
Mahogany table, small round 3-legged
Long mantel mirror, gilt frame
3 oil paintings, 3 engravings
Rustic seat (filled with wood)
Old-fashioned heating stove, crated
Candle-lantern, 2 Japanese trays
Door-scraper, woodbasket
Tongs-holder, hearth brush
Child's garden tools
2 sofa cushions
Various small ornaments

KITCHEN

Ironing Table, stand, wax, bosom board
Tin pail, dipper, basin
1 new broom, 1 old broom
Tool box, tools, nails, saw, hatchet
Hammock, barrel hammock, tie ropes
Soap rack, dustpan, scrap basket
Folding hat rack, ladder
Carving set, 6 knives (very old)
Coffee pot, toaster, egg whip, egg beater
5 large white china plates
5 medium and 6 small ditto
6 demi tasse and saucers, same
2 tea cups, 6 saucers, same
2 egg stands, green; 2 sugar bowls
1 butterfly cup and saucer
6 glasses, 1 lemon squeezer
1 mechanical red-glass lamp
2 reading lamps, 3 small hand lamps
3 small bracket lamps, 1 shade
White shades at all windows

GREEN BEDROOM

Green bedstead (three-quarter)
2 mattresses, 2 pillows, madras cover
Green bureau; green washstand
Green table; green rocking chair
Oak chair; 2 pictures; 1 chamber

LARGE EAST BEDROOM

Oak bedstead (double)
Oak bureau, oak washstand
2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster
2 pillows, madras spread
1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow
2 chairs, 2 towel racks
Bureau cover, pen cushion, etc.
3 pictures

SOUTHWEST BEDROOM
Black walnut single bedstead
1 hair mattress and bolster
1 pillow, 1 feather bed, 1 madras spread
Bureau (mirror broken), 2 towel racks
Mahogany washstand, mirror
Small 3-legged table
3 rosewood chairs
Bureau cover, pin cushion, etc.
Shoebag on wall
Oil painting, on copper
Brass stair rods, in closet

NORTHWEST BEDROOM

2 mahogany bureaus, empty trunk
Portable bath-tub, clothes basket
On shelves: 7 sheets, 7 pillow cases
3 table cloths, 10 doilies
4 towels, dish cloths and towels
Bureau and tray cloths
Curtains, enough for doors
Curtains for some windows

Apply to "Summer Cottage," care of The Forerunner or to John B. Burnham,
Agent, Essex, N.Y.

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 8
JUNE, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Clothing is for five purposes: Decoration, Protection, Warmth, Modesty,
and Symbolism. Can you explain yours?

THE PURITAN

"Where is God?" I cried. "Let me hear!"
"I long for the voice of God!"
And I smote and trod
On all things clamoring near;
Small voices dear,
That wept and murmured and sung
Till my heart was wrung;
That shrieked, shrieked loud and clear,
As I with hammer and sword
Slew them in the name of the Lord.
Where is God?" I cried. "Let me hear!"
But my ears were ringing yet
With cries I could not forget;
The blood was flowing still,
From the thing I could not kill;
A smothered sobbing cry
Filled all the red, wet earth, the cold, hard sky--
God came not near.

Then long I lived alone,
On the desolate land; a stone
On the thing I could not kill.
I bent to my hardened will
All things that lived below;
I strove to climb above,
To the land of living love
I had dreamed of long ago,
But I could not see--not know.
"O God!" I cried, "Come near!
Speak! Let thy servant hear!
Have I not utterly slain
With tears of blood, with sweat of pain,
In this base heart of mine
All voices old and dear--to hear but Thine!
And if there struggleth still
The thing I could not kill,
Have I not put a stone
On its head? O Thou alone
Whom I would follow and fear--
Speak! Let Thy servant hear!"

Silent I lay, and weak;
Then did the darkness speak;
"Child of the World! My love
Is beneath as well as above!
Thou art not always led
By a light that shines ahead!
But pushed by an impulse blind--
A mighty Power behind!
Lifted, as all things grow,
By forces from below!
Fear not for thy long mistake--
Listen! And there shall wake
The voice that has found the way
From the beginning, upward ever, into the light of day!
Lo! I am with thee still--
The thing thou couldst not kill!

MAKING A LIVING

"There won't be any litigation and chicanery to help you out, young man.
I've fixed that. Here are the title deeds of your precious
country-place; you can sit in that hand-made hut of yours and make
poetry and crazy inventions the rest of your life! The water's
good--and I guess you can live on the chestnuts!"

"Yes, sir," said Arnold Blake, rubbing his long chin dubiously. "I
guess I can."

His father surveyed him with entire disgust. "If you had wit enough you
might rebuild that old saw-mill and make a living off it!"

"Yes, sir," said Arnold again. "I had thought of that."

"You had, had you?" sneered his father. "Thought of it because it
rhymed, I bet you! Hill and mill, eh? Hut and nut, trees and breeze,
waterfall--beat-'em-all? I'm something of a poet myself, you see!
Well,--there's your property. And with what your Mother left you will
buy books and writing paper! As for my property--that's going to Jack.
I've got the papers for that too. Not being an idiot I've saved out
enough for myself--no Lear business for mine! Well, boy--I'm sorry
you're a fool. But you've got what you seem to like best."

"Yes, sir," said Arnold once more. "I have, and I'm really much obliged
to you, Father, for not trying to make me take the business."

Then young John Blake, pattern and image of his father, came into
possession of large assets and began to use them in the only correct
way; to increase and multiply without end.

Then old John Blake, gazing with pride on his younger son, whose acumen
almost compensated him for the bitter disappointment of being father to
a poet; set forth for a season of rest and change.

"I'm going to see the world! I never had time before!" quoth he; and
started off for Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Then Arnold Blake, whose eyes were the eyes of a poet, but whose mouth
had a touch of resemblance to his father's, betook himself to his Hill.

But the night before they separated, he and his brother both proposed to
Ella Sutherland. John because he had made up his mind that it was the
proper time for him to marry, and this was the proper woman; and Arnold
because he couldn't help it.

John got to work first. He was really very fond of Ella, and made hot
love to her. It was a painful surprise to him to be refused. He argued
with her. He told her how much he loved her.

"There are others!" said Miss Ella.

He told her how rich he was.

"That isn't the point," said Ella.

He told her how rich he was going to be.

"I'm not for sale!" said Ella, "even on futures!"

Then he got angry and criticised her judgement.

"It's a pity, isn't it," she said, "for me to have such poor
judgment--and for you to have to abide by it!"

"I won't take your decision," said John. "You're only a child yet. In
two years' time you'll be wiser. I'll ask you again then."

"All right," said Ella. "I'll answer you again then."

John went away, angry, but determined.

Arnold was less categorical.

"I've no right to say a word," he began, and then said it. Mostly he
dilated on her beauty and goodness and his overmastering affection for
her.

"Are you offering marriage?" she inquired, rather quizzically.

"Why yes--of course!" said he, "only--only I've nothing to offer."

"There's you!" said Ella.

"But that's so little!" said Arnold. "O! if you will wait for me!--I
will work!--"

"What will you work at?" said Ella.

Arnold laughed. Ella laughed. "I love to camp out!" said she.

"Will you wait for me a year?" said Arnold.

"Ye-es," said Ella. I'll even wait two--if I have to. But no longer!"

"What will you do then?" asked Arnold miserably.

"Marry you," said Ella.

So Arnold went off to his Hill.

What was one hill among so many? There they arose about him, far green,
farther blue, farthest purple, rolling away to the real peaks of the
Catskills. This one had been part of his mother's father's land; a big
stretch, coming down to them from an old Dutch grant. It ran out like a
promontory into the winding valley below; the valley that had been a
real river when the Catskills were real mountains. There was some river
there yet, a little sulky stream, fretting most of the year in its
sunken stony bed, and losing its temper altogether when the spring
floods came.

Arnold did not care much for the river--he had a brook of his own; an
ideal brook, beginning with an over-flowing spring; and giving him three
waterfalls and a lake on his own land. It was a very little lake and
handmade. In one place his brook ran through a narrow valley or
valleyette--so small it was; and a few weeks of sturdy work had damned
the exit and made a lovely pool. Arnold did that years ago, when he was
a great hulking brooding boy, and used to come up there with his mother
in summer; while his father stuck to the office and John went to Bar
Harbor with his chums. Arnold could work hard even if he was a poet.

He quarried stone from his hill--as everyone did in those regions; and
built a small solid house, adding to it from year to year; that was a
growing joy as long as the dear mother lived.

This was high up, near the dark, clear pool of the spring; he had piped
the water into the house--for his mother's comfort. It stood on a level
terrace, fronting south-westward; and every season he did more to make
it lovely. There was a fine smooth lawn there now and flowering vines
and bushes; every pretty wild thing that would grow and bloom of itself
in that region, he collected about him.

That dear mother had delighted in all the plants and trees; she studied
about them and made observations, while he enjoyed them--and made poems.
The chestnuts were their common pride. This hill stood out among all
the others in the flowering time, like a great pompon, and the odor of
it was by no means attractive--unless you happened to like it, as they
did.

The chestnut crop was tremendous; and when Arnold found that not only
neighboring boys, but business expeditions from the city made a practice
of rifling his mountain garden, he raged for one season and acted the
next. When the first frost dropped the great burrs, he was on hand,
with a posse of strong young fellows from the farms about. They beat
and shook and harvested, and sack upon sack of glossy brown nuts were
piled on wagons and sent to market by the owner instead of the
depredator.

Then he and his mother made great plans, the eager boy full of ambition.
He studied forestry and arboriculture; and grafted the big fat foreign
chestnut on his sturdy native stocks, while his father sneered and
scolded because he would not go into the office.

Now he was left to himself with his plans and hopes. The dear mother
was gone, but the hill was there--and Ella might come some day; there
was a chance.

"What do you think of it?" he said to Patsy. Patsy was not Irish. He
was an Italian from Tuscany; a farmer and forester by birth and
breeding, a soldier by compulsion, an American citizen by choice.

"Fine!" said Patsy. "Fine. Ver' good. You do well."

They went over the ground together. "Could you build a little house
here?" said Arnold. "Could you bring your wife? Could she attend to my
house up there?--and could you keep hens and a cow and raise vegetables
on this patch here--enough for all of us?--you to own the house and
land--only you cannot sell it except to me?"

Then Patsy thanked his long neglected saints, imported his wife and
little ones, took his eldest daughter out of the box factory, and his
eldest son out of the printing office; and by the end of the summer they
were comfortably established and ready to attend to the chestnut crop.

Arnold worked as hard as his man. Temporarily he hired other sturdy
Italians, mechanics of experience; and spent his little store of capital
in a way that would have made his father swear and his brother jeer at
him.

When the year was over he had not much money left, but he had by his
second waterfall a small electrical plant, with a printing office
attached; and by the third a solid little mill, its turbine wheel
running merrily in the ceaseless pour. Millstones cost more money than
he thought, but there they were--brought up by night from the Hudson
River--that his neighbors might not laugh too soon. Over the mill were
large light rooms, pleasant to work in; with the shade of mighty trees
upon the roof; and the sound of falling water in the sun.

By next summer this work was done, and the extra workmen gone. Whereat
our poet refreshed himself with a visit to his Ella, putting in some
lazy weeks with her at Gloucester, happy and hopeful, but silent.

"How's the chestnut crop?" she asked him.

"Fine. Ver' good," he answered. "That's what Patsy says--and Patsy
knows."

She pursued her inquiries. "Who cooks for you? Who keeps your camp in
order? Who washes your clothes?"

"Mrs. Patsy," said he. "She's as good a cook as anybody need want."

"And how is the prospect?" asked Ella.

Arnold turned lazily over, where he lay on the sand at her feet, and
looked at her long and hungrily. "The prospect," said he, "is divine."

Ella blushed and laughed and said he was a goose; but he kept on
looking.

He wouldn't tell her much, though. "Don't, dear," he said when she
urged for information. "It's too serious. If I should fail--"

"You won't fail!" she protested. "You can't fail! And if you
do--why--as I told you before, I like to camp out!"

But when he tried to take some natural advantage of her friendliness she
teased him--said he was growing to look just like his father! Which
made them both laugh.

Arnold returned and settled down to business. He purchased stores of
pasteboard, of paper, of printers ink, and a little machine to fold
cartons. Thus equipped he retired to his fastness, and set dark-eyed
Caterlina to work in a little box factory of his own; while clever
Guiseppe ran the printing press, and Mafalda pasted. Cartons, piled
flat, do not take up much room, even in thousands.

Then Arnold loafed deliberately.

"Why not your Mr. Blake work no more?" inquired Mrs. Patsy of her
spouse.

"O he work--he work hard," replied Patsy. "You women--you not
understand work!"

Mrs. Patsy tossed her head and answered in fluent Italian, so that her
husband presently preferred out of doors occupation; but in truth Arnold
Blake did not seem to do much that summer. He loafed under his great
trees, regarding them lovingly; he loafed by his lonely upper waterfall,
with happy dreaming eyes; he loafed in his little blue lake--floating
face to the sky, care free and happy as a child. And if he scribbled a
great deal--at any sudden moment when the fit seized him, why that was
only his weakness as a poet.

Toward the end of September, he invited an old college friend up to see
him; now a newspaper man--in the advertising department. These two
seemed to have merry times together. They fished and walked and
climbed, they talked much; and at night were heard roaring with laughter
by their hickory fire.

"Have you got any money left?" demanded his friend.

"About a thou--" said Arnold. "And that's got to last me till next
spring, you know."

"Blow it in--blow in every cent--it'll pay you. You can live through
the winter somehow. How about transportation?"

"Got a nice electric dray--light and strong. Runs down hill with the
load to tidewater, you see, and there's the old motorboat to take it
down. Brings back supplies."

"Great!--It's simply great! Now, you save enough to eat till spring and
give me the rest. Send me your stuff, all of it! and as soon as you get
in a cent above expenses--send me that--I'll 'tend to the advertising!"

He did. He had only $800 to begin with. When the first profits began
to come in he used them better; and as they rolled up he still spent
them. Arnold began to feel anxious, to want to save money; but his
friend replied: "You furnish the meal--I'll furnish the market!" And he
did.

He began it in the subway in New York; that place of misery where eyes,
ears, nose, and common self-respect are all offended, and even an
advertisement is some relief.

"Hill" said the first hundred dollars, on a big blank space for a week.
"Mill" said the second. "Hill Mill Meal," said the third.

The fourth was more explicit.

"When tired of every cereal
Try our new material--
Hill Mill Meal."

The fifth--

"Ask your grocer if you feel
An interest in Hill Mill Meal.
Samples free."

The sixth--
"A paradox! Surprising! True!
Made of chestnuts but brand new!
Hill Mill Meal."

And the seventh--

"Solomon said it couldn't be done,
There wasn't a new thing under the sun--
He never ate Hill Mill Meal!"

Seven hundred dollars went in this one method only; and meanwhile
diligent young men in automobiles were making arrangements and leaving
circulars and samples with the grocer. Anybody will take free samples
and everybody likes chestnuts. Are they not the crown of luxury in
turkey stuffing? The gem of the confection as _marron glaces_? The
sure profit of the corner-merchant with his little charcoal stove, even
when they are half scorched and half cold? Do we not all love them,
roast, or boiled--only they are so messy to peel.

Arnold's only secret was his process; but his permanent advantage was in
the fine quality of his nuts, and his exquisite care in manufacture. In
dainty, neat, easily opened cartons (easily shut too, so they were not
left gaping to gather dust), he put upon the market a sort of samp,
chestnuts perfectly shelled and husked, roasted and ground, both coarse
and fine. Good? You stood and ate half a package out of your hand,
just tasting of it. Then you sat down and ate the other half.

He made pocket-size cartons, filled with whole ones, crafty man! And
they became "The Business Man's Lunch" forthwith. A pocketful of roast
chestnuts--and no mess nor trouble! And when they were boiled--well, we
all know how good boiled chestnuts are. As to the meal, a new variety
of mush appeared, and gems, muffins, and pancakes that made old epicures
feel young again in the joys of a fresh taste, and gave America new
standing in the eyes of France.

The orders rolled in and the poetry rolled out. The market for a new
food is as wide as the world; and Jim Chamberlin was mad to conquer it,
but Arnold explained to him that his total output was only so many
bushels a year.

"Nonsense!" said Jim. "You're a--a--well, a _poet_! Come! Use your
imagination! Look at these hills about you--they could grow chestnuts
to the horizon! Look at this valley, that rattling river, a bunch of
mills could run here! You can support a fine population--a whole
village of people--there's no end to it, I tell you!"

"And where would my privacy be then and the beauty of the place?" asked
Arnold, "I love this green island of chestnut trees, and the winding
empty valley, just freckled with a few farms. I'd hate to support a
village!"

"But you can be a Millionaire!" said Jim.

"I don't want to be a Millionaire," Arnold cheerfully replied.

Jim gazed at him, opening and shutting his mouth in silence.
"You--confounded old--_poet_!" he burst forth at last.

"I can't help that," said Arnold.

"You'd better ask Miss Sutherland about it, I think," his friend drily
suggested.

"To be sure! I had forgotten that--I will," the poet replied.

Then he invited her to come up and visit his Hill, met her at the train
with the smooth, swift, noiseless, smell-less electric car, and held her
hand in blissful silence as they rolled up the valley road. They wound
more slowly up his graded avenue, green-arched by chestnut boughs.

He showed her the bit of meadowy inlet where the mill stood, by the
heavy lower fall; the broad bright packing rooms above, where the busy
Italian boys and girls chattered gaily as they worked. He showed her
the second fall, with his little low-humming electric plant; a bluestone
building, vine-covered, lovely, a tiny temple to the flower-god.

"It does our printing," said Arnold, "gives us light, heat and
telephones. And runs the cars."

Then he showed her the shaded reaches of his lake, still, starred with
lilies, lying dark under the curving boughs of water maples, doubling
the sheer height of flower-crowned cliffs.

She held his hand tighter as they wound upward, circling the crown of
the hill that she might see the splendid range of outlook; and swinging
smoothly down a little and out on the green stretch before the house.

Ella gasped with delight. Gray, rough and harmonious, hung with
woodbine and wildgrape, broad-porched and wide-windowed, it faced the
setting sun. She stood looking, looking, over the green miles of
tumbling hills, to the blue billowy far-off peaks swimming in soft
light.

"There's the house," said Arnold, "furnished--there's a view room built
on--for you, dear; I did it myself. There's the hill--and the little
lake and one waterfall all for us! And the spring, and the garden, and
some very nice Italians. And it will earn--my Hill and Mill, about
three or four thousand dollars a year--above _all_ expenses!"

"How perfectly splendid!" said Ella. "But there's one thing you've left
out!"

"What's that?" he asked, a little dashed.

"_You_!" she answered. "Arnold Blake! My Poet!"

"Oh, I forgot," he added, after some long still moments. "I ought to
ask you about this first. Jim Chamberlain says I can cover all these
hills with chestnuts, fill this valley with people, string that little
river with a row of mills, make breakfast for all the world--and be a
Millionaire. Shall I?"

"For goodness sake--_No_!" said Ella. "Millionaire, indeed? And spoil
the most perfect piece of living I ever saw or heard of!"

Then there was a period of bliss, indeed there was enough to last
indefinitely.

But one pleasure they missed. They never saw even the astonished face,
much less the highly irritated mind, of old John Blake, when he first
returned from his two years of travel. The worst of it was he had eaten
the stuff all the way home-and liked it! They told him it was Chestnut
Meal--but that meant nothing to him. Then he began to find the jingling
advertisements in every magazine; things that ran in his head and
annoyed him.

"When corn or rice no more are nice,
When oatmeal seems to pall,
When cream of wheat's no longer sweet
And you abhor them all--"

"I do abhor them all!" the old man would vow, and take up a newspaper,
only to read:

"Better than any food that grows
Upon or in the ground,
Strong, pure and sweet
And good to eat
Our tree-born nuts are found."

"Bah!" said Mr. Blake, and tried another, which only showed him:

"Good for mother, good for brother,
Good for child;
As for father--well, rather!
He's just wild."

He was. But the truth never dawned upon him till he came to this one:

"About my hut
There grew a nut
Nutritious;
I could but feel
'Twould make a meal
Delicious.

I had a Hill,
I built a Mill
Upon it.
And hour by hour
I sought for power
To run it.

To burn my trees
Or try the breeze
Seemed crazy;
To use my arm
Had little charm--
I'm lazy!

The nuts are here,
But coal!--Quite dear
We find it!
We have the stuff.
Where's power enough
To grind it?

What force to find
My nuts to grind?
I've found it!
The Water-fall
Could beat 'em all--
And ground it!

PETER POETICUS."

"Confound your impudence!" he wrote to his son. "And confound your
poetic stupidity in not making a Big Business now you've got a start!
But I understand you do make a living, and I'm thankful for that."

*

Arnold and Ella, watching the sunset from their hammock, laughed softly
together, and lived.

TEN SUGGESTIONS

This is a sermon.

Its purpose is to point out the need of a clearer conception of right
and wrong, based on knowledge.

Its text is from Ecclesiastes I, 13, "And I gave my heart to seek and
search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven;
this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised
therewith."

(Let me remark here that I had my sermon in mind before I looked for the
text; but a more expressive and beautifully apposite one I never saw!)

The Preacher of old is right; this sore travail was laid upon us, a most
useful exercise; but we have lazily evaded it and taken other people's
judgment as to our duties.

That would-be Empire Builder, Moses, legislated for his people with an
unlimited explicitness that reflects small credit on their power to
search out by wisdom.

His cut and dried rules went down to most delicate selection of ovine
vicera for the sacrifice--"the fat and the rump, and the fat that
covereth the inwards and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys";
and into careful dietetics, which would cut out from our food list the
hare and rabbit, the lobster, the crab, the turtle, the clam, oyster and
scallop, indeed all shellfish.

The "fowls that creep, going upon all four," whatever they may be, are
also considered an abomination; but locusts, bald locusts, and
grasshoppers are recommended by name. Even in clothing we are carefully
forbidden to use a garment of linen and woolen, yet among our pious
Puritan ancestors "linsey-woolsey" was a very common and useful cloth.

All these secondary Mosaic directions have long since been relegated to
their place in archaeology; at least by the Christian churches, but the
ten commandments are still held as coming direct from God; and form the
main basis of our ethics. Yet while tacitly accepted they are not
studied, and few people have remarked how the pressure of social
development has changed their weight and relative value.

At first they stood, imposing and alike, an even row, to break anyone of
which was held an equal sin. Few persons now would hold disrespect to a
patently disrespectable parent as wrong as murder; or a failure to
"remember the Sabbath" as great a sin as adultery. Experience has
taught us something, and those who have undertaken that sore travail--to
seek and search out by wisdom--have found that some things are much more
wrong than others--and why.

I met once a very pious man; dark, gloomy, violently virtuous. He
looked like one of Cromwell's deacons; but was in fact a southerner and
an Episcopalian. Mention was made of an enlightened jury, somewhere in
the west, who had acquitted a man who stole bread for his starving
children.

"Good!" said I; "good! we are at last learning to discriminate in our
judgment of right and wrong."

He glowered at me forbiddingly. "There is no room for judgment," he
said; as if he were Fate itself. "There is a Commandment which says,
'Thou shalt not steal!'"

"Do you mean that all the Commandments stand equally?" I inquired.
"That we must hold all of the same importance, without qualification,
and to break any is an equal sin?"

"I do!" he said, with solemn assurance.

I meditated a little, and then asked, "Did you not say to me the other
day that if the negroes ever tried to assert social equality, you would
be among the first to shoulder your gun and put them in their place?"

"I would!" he admitted proudly.

"But," said I, "is there not a commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not
kill?'"

He was silent. He was much annoyed, and saw no way out of his morass of
contradiction. Then I offered what looked like a plank, a
stepping-stone to safety. "Surely," said I, "there is some room for
judgment. The later and smaller laws and regulations give many
directions for killing. All through ancient Hebraic history it was
frequently a special mandate, the people being distinctly commanded to
slay and destroy, sometimes even to kill women, children and the unborn.
And to-day--even a Christian man, in the exercise of legal justice, in
defence of his life, his family, his country,--surely he has a right to
kill! Do you not think there are times when it is right to kill?"

With a long breath of relief he agreed.

"Then why may it not be sometimes right to commit adultery?"

The conversation lapsed. He knew the two offenses were not in the same
category. He knew that the reasons adultery is wrong, and killing is
wrong are older than Hebrew history, and rest on observed facts. It
would be a hardy thinker who would defend adultery; but we all know--to
quote Ecclesiastes again that "There is a time to kill and a time to
heal."

It may be that that set of ten applied with beautiful precision to the
special vices of that people and that time; but there is room for many
more needed ones to-day. There is no commandment against gambling, for
instance; one of the most universal and indefensible evils. Gambling
does no one good; the winner of unearned money is corrupted and the
loser both corrupted and deprived. Gambling undermines all habits of
industry and thrift; it unsettles our reliance on care, patience,
thoroughness, ability, and tempts us to rely on chance. It is an
unmitigated social evil, but goes unforbidden by the Mosaic code, which
was so careful about which kind of fat to sacrifice and how much
uncleaner a girl baby was than a boy.

Speaking of social evil, _the_ social evil is not referred to. Adultery
is an offence to be sure, dangerous and destructive to family and social
life; but prostitution is a greater evil; far more common--and goes
unmentioned; unless in the original it meant the same thing.

Lying is not referred to. Of course some say that bearing false witness
means lying; but surely malicious perjury is a special crime, distinctly
described, and not the same thing as mere misrepresentation.

Another of the blackest sins known to man, always so recognized and
punished, goes without notice in this list:--treason. To betray one's
country--what could be worse! Is it not visibly wickeder than to play
ball on Sunday?

On the positive side our whole code of ethics, Hebrew and Christian,
fails to mention the main duty of life--to do your best work. This is
the one constant social service; and its reverse is a constant social
injury.

The old ethics is wholly personal, the new ethics (still unwritten) is
social first--personal later. In the old list we find, on a par with
adultery, theft and murder, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in vain." Does this mean common swearing? Is it as wrong to
say 'damn' as to commit murder?

No, we do know better than that. We know that in those days, when lying
was so universal a habit that no one thought of prohibiting it, the two
most evil extremes were flat perjury with intent to harm, and the solemn
invocation of God's name to bind a bargain or seal a vow, afterward
broken. Both these were carefully forbidden. No one thought of
believing anything unless it was sworn to--and if they broke their oath
there was no reliance anywhere. To compel a slippery people to keep
faith--that was good ethics; and then most necessary.

We do not run our business that way now; we do greater evil in new
ways--and there is no commandment to forbid us. If that one read, "Thou
shalt not break faith nor cheat," it would have applied equally well
now.

The very first one is a curious proof of the then belief in many gods.
Jehovah does not say, "I am the only God," He says, "Thou shalt have no
other gods before me." That there were others is admitted, but it is
forbidden to run after them.

Nowadays we do not care enough even for our own idea of God--to say
nothing of other people's! And look at all that careful objection to
images and likenesses, and idol worship generally. The Jews forebore
painting and sculpture for many centuries because of that prohibition.
Now everyone with a kodak breaks it. The growth of true religious
feeling, as well as scientific thought, makes it impossible for
civilized peoples to make images and worship them, as did those
ingenious old Moabites and Midianites, Jebuzites and Perrizites,
Hittites and Haggathites.

The rigorous prohibition of coveting has always puzzled me--to covet is
such a private feeling. And if you keep it to yourself, what harm does
it do? You may spend your life wishing you had your neighbor's large
red automobile; but he is none the poorer. Of course if one sits up
nights to covet; or does it daytimes, by the hour, to the exclusion of
other business; it would interfere with industry and injure the health.
Can it be that the ancient Hebrews were that covetous?

Now suppose we do in good earnest give our hearts to seek and search out
all things that are done under heaven, to classify and study them, to
find which are most injurious and which are most beneficial, and base
thereon a farther code of ethics--by no means excluding the old.

The two great Christian laws will stand solidly. The absolute and all
absorbing love of God and the love of the neighbor which is much the
same thing--are good general directions. But in daily living; in
confronting that ceaseless array of "all things that are done under
heaven," the average person cannot stop to think out just how this game
of bridge or that horse-race interferes with love of God or man. We
need good hard honest scientific study; sore travail, which God hath
given to the sons of men, to be exercised therewith; and a further code
of ethics, not claimed as directly handed down from Heaven, but proven
by plain facts of common experience. We do not need to imitate or
parody the authoritative utterance of any priesthood; we want an
exposition which a bright child can understand and a practical man
respect.

We have succeeded before now in establishing elaborate codes of
conduct--yes and enforcing them, without any better sanction than habit,
prejudice, tradition. A schoolboy has his notion of right behavior, not
traceable to Hebrew or Christian ethics; so has the grown man, putting
his quaint ideas of "honor" and "sportsmanship" far beyond any religious
teaching. Our scorn of the tell-tale and the coward is not based on the
Bible, but on experience; our inhuman cruelty to "the woman who has
sinned" is based on mere ignorance and falsehood.

Take that fatuous "unwritten law" which allows a man to murder another
man and the wife who has offended what he calls "his honor." There is
nothing about that honor of his in old or new testament. It is a notion
of his own, which overrides, "Thou shalt not kill," as easily as "lying
like a gentleman" overrides, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Since we have shown such simple capacity to invent and enforce codes of
ethics, of questionable value, why not exercise our ingenuity in making
some better ones? We know more now.

As a matter of fact we do not want commands, we want instructions; we
want to know why things are wrong, which are the most wrong, and what
are their respective consequences. But if a distinct set of
prohibitions is preferred it is quite possible to make some that would
fit our present day conditions more closely than the Hebraic list.

It would be an interesting thing to have earnest people give their minds
to this and seek and search out for themselves a new light on everyday
ethics. As a starter here is a tentative list to think about; open to
alteration and addition by anyone.

And on what authority are these presented? some will ask. Not on
"authority" at all; but on law, natural law, the right and wrong
indicated being long since known to us. And are these set
presumptuously in the place of the Divine Command? will be tremblingly
inquired. By no means. The Ten stand as before--these are auxiliary
and merely suggestive of study.

1. Thou shalt learn that human love is a natural law and obey it as the
main condition of life: the service of man is the worship of God.

2. Thou shalt learn that the first duty of human life is to find thy
work and do it; for by labor ye live and grow and in it is worship,
pride and joy.

3. Thou shalt keep an open mind and use it, welcoming new knowledge and
new truth and giving them to all.

4. Thou shalt maintain liberty and justice for everyone.

5. Thou shalt maintain thy health and thy chastity. Temperance and
purity are required of all men.

6. Thou shalt not lie, break faith or cheat.

7. Thou shalt not gamble, nor live idly on the labor of others, nor by
any usury.

8. Thou shalt not steal; nor take from one another save in fair
exchange or as a free gift.

9. Thou shalt not do unnecessary hurt to any living thing.

10. Thou shalt not worship the past nor be content with the present,
for growth is the law of life.

THE MALINGERER

Exempt! She "does not have to work!"
So might one talk
Defending long, bedridden ease,
Weak yielding ankles, flaccid knees,
With, "I don't have to walk!"

Not have to work. Why not? Who gave
Free pass to you?
You're housed and fed and taught and dressed
By age-long labor of the rest--
Work other people do!

What do you give in honest pay
For clothes and food?
Then as a shield, defence, excuse,
She offers her exclusive use--
Her function--Motherhood!

Is motherhood a trade you make
A living by?
And does the wealth you so may use,
Squander, accumulate, abuse,
Show motherhood as high?

Or does the motherhood of those
Whose toil endures,
The farmers' and mechanics' wives,
Hard working servants all their lives--
Deserve less price than yours?

We're not exempt! Man's world runs on,
Motherless, wild;
Our servitude and long duress,
Our shameless, harem idleness,
Both fail to serve the child.

GENIUS, DOMESTIC AND MATERNAL

Most of us believe the human race to be the highest form of life--so
far. Not all of us know why. Because we do not properly realize the
causes of our superiority and swift advance, we do not take advantage of
them as we should.

Among various causes of human supremacy, none counts more than our
social gift of genius, the special power that is given to some more than
others, as part of social specialization. In social life, which is
organic, we do not find each one doing the same work, but some,
especially fitted for one thing, doing that thing for the service of the
others. No creature approaches us in the degree of our specialization,
and the crowning power of individual genius.

Because of this power we, as a whole, have benefited by the "genius for
mechanics," for invention, for discovery, for administration, and all
the commoner lines of work, as well as in the fine arts and professions.
The great surgeon is a genius as well as the great painter or poet, and
the world profits by the mighty works of these specialized servants.

For the development of genius we must allow it to specialize, of course.
The genius of Beethoven would have done us little good if he had passed
his life as a bookkeeper or dealer in ironware. The greatest of poets
could produce little poetry if he worked twelve hours a day in a rolling
mill. Genius may overcome some forms of opposition, but it must be
allowed to do the work it has a genius for--or none will be manifested.

We can easily see what a loss it would have been to the world if all
forms of genius had been checked and smothered; if we had no better
poetry than the average man writes when he is in love, no better surgery
than each of us could perform if he had to, no better music than the
tunes we make up to amuse ourselves, no better machinery than each of us
is capable of inventing. We know full well the limitation of the
average mind.

Now, suppose we had no better guide than that, no specialization at all,
no great financiers, no great administrators, no great astronomers or
architects, no great anything--simply the average mind, doing everything
for itself without any help from others. A nice, flat, low-grade world
we would have! Think of the houses, each of them "the house that Jack
built," and not a building on earth bigger or better than Jack alone
could make! No sciences, no arts, no skilled trades (one cannot develop
much special skill while doing everything for oneself); no teachers and
leaders of any sort--just the strength and ingenuity of each one of us,
trying to meet his own needs by his own efforts.

This would be stark savagery, not civilization.

All this is as true of women as it is of men; women also are human
beings, and members of society. Women have capacity for specialization,
for strong preference and high ability in certain kinds of work. But
since a man's world has viewed women only as females, since their
feminine functions were practically uniform, and since everything they
did was considered a feminine function, therefore women have not been
allowed to specialize and develop genius. All women were required to do
the same work (a) "keep house"; (b) "rear children."

These things we have at no time viewed as arts, trades, sciences or
professions; they were considered as feminine functions, and to be
performed by "instinct." Instinct is hereditary habit. It is developed
by the repeated action of identical conditions. It is a fine thing, for
animals, who have nothing else.

In humanity, instinct disappears in proportion as reason develops. Our
conditions vary, even more and rapidly, and we have to have something
much more rapid and alterable than instinct. No great man runs a
business by instinct; he learns how. For the performance of any social
service of importance, three powers are required. First, special
ability or genius; second, education; third, experience. When we are
served by special ability, education and experience, we are well served.
Any human business left without these is left at the bottom of the
ladder.

That is where we find the two great branches of human service left to
women, the domestic and the maternal. These universal services, of most
vital importance not only to our individual lives but to our social
development, are left to be performed by the average mind, by the
average woman, by instinct.

Our shoemaking is done by a shoemaker, our blacksmithing by a
blacksmith, our doctoring by a doctor; but our cooking is done not by a
cook, but by the woman a man happens to marry. She may, by rare chance,
have some genius for cooking; but even if she does, there is no
education and experience, save such as she may get from a cook book and
a lifetime of catering to one family. Quite aside from cooking, the
management of our daily living is a form of social service which should
be given by genius, education, and experience; and, like the cooking, it
is performed by any pretty girl a man secures in marriage.

This vast field of comfort or discomfort, ease or disease, happiness or
unhappiness, is cut off from the uplifting influence of specialization.

But it is in the tasks and cares we call "maternal" that our strange
restriction of normal development does most damage. We have lumped
under their large and generous term all the things done to the little
child--by his mother. What his father does for him is not so limited.

A child needs a house to live in--but his father does not have to build
it. A child needs shoes, hats, furniture, dishes, toys--his father does
not have to make them. A child needs, above all things,
instruction--his father does not have to give it.

No, the fathers, humanly specialized, developing great skill and making
constant progress, give to the world's children human advantages. A
partly civilized state, comparative peace, such and such religions and
systems of education, such and such fruits of the industry, trade,
commerce of the time, and the mighty works of genius; all these men give
to children, not individually, as parents, but collectively, as human
beings. The father who, as a savage, could give his children only a
father's services, now gives them the services of carpenters and masons,
farmers and graziers, doctors and lawyers, painters and glaziers,
butchers and bakers, soldiers and sailors--all the multiplied abilities
of modern specialization; while the mother is "only mother" still.

There are three exceptions: that most ancient division of labor which
provided the nurse, the next oldest which gave the servant, and the very
recent one which has lifted the world so wonderfully, the teacher. The
first two are still unspecialized. As any woman is supposed to be a
competent mother, so any woman is supposed to be a competent nursemaid
or housemaid. The teacher, however, has to learn his business, is a
skilled professional, and accomplishes much.

Teaching is a form of specialized motherhood. It gives "the mother
love"--an attribute of all female animals toward their own young--a
chance to grow to social form as a general love of children, and through
specialization, training, experience, it makes this love far more
useful. The teacher is to some degree a social mother, and the
advantage of this social motherhood is so great that it would seem
impossible to question it. Motherhood is common to all races of
humanity, down to the Bushmen, as well as to beasts and birds.
Education is found only with us; and in proportion to our stage of
social progress. Where there is no education but the mother's--no
progress. Where the teacher comes, and in proportion to the quantity
and quality of teachers, so advances civilization. In Africa there are
mothers, prolific and affectionate; in China, in India, everywhere. But
the nations with the most and best education are those which lead the
world.

Similarly in domestic service. Everywhere on earth, to the lowest
savages, we find the individual woman serving the individual man. "Home
cooking" varies with the home; from the oil-lamp of the Eskimo or
brazier of the Oriental, up to the more elaborate stoves and ranges of
to-day; but the art of cooking has grown through the men cooks, who made
it a business, and gave to this valuable form of social service the
advantages of genius, training and experience.

The whole people share in the development of architecture, of electric
transportation and communication, of science and invention. But no such
development is possible to the general public, in these basic
necessities of child care and house care, for the obvious reason above
stated, that these tasks are left to the unspecialized, untrained,
unexperienced average woman.

The child should have from birth the advantages of civilization. The
home should universally share in the progress of the age. To some
extent this now takes place, as far as the advance in child-culture can
spread and filter downward to the average mother, through the darkness
of ignorance and the obstacles of prejudice, and as far as public
statutes can enforce upon the private home the sanitary requirements of
the age. But this is a slow and pitifully small advance; we need
genius, for our children; genius to insure the health and happiness of
our daily lives.

Motherhood pure and simple, the bearing, nursing, loving and providing
for a child, is a feminine function, and should be common to all women.
But that "providing" does not have to be done in person. The mother has
long since deputed to the father the two main lines of child
care--defence and maintenance. She has allowed her responsibility to
shift in this matter on the ground that he could do it better than she
could.

In instruction she has accepted the services of the school, and of the
music-teacher, dancing-teacher, and other specialists; in case of
illness, she relies on the doctor; in daily use, she is glad to
patronize the shoemaker and hatter, seamstress and tailor. Yet in the
position of nurse and teacher to the baby, she admits no assistance
except a servant. But the first four or five years of a child's life
are of preeminent importance. Here above all is where he needs the
advantage of genius, training and experience, and is given but ignorant
affection and hired labor.

Some, to-day, driven to the wall by glaring facts such as these, that
babies die most of preventable diseases, and that their death rate is
greatest while they are most absolutely in their mother's care, do admit
the need of improvement. But they say, "The mother should engage this
specialist to help her in the home," or, "The mother must be taught."

If all normal women are to be mothers, as they should, how are any
specialists to be hired in private homes? A young nursemaid cannot
reach the heights of training and experience needed. As to teaching the
mother--_who is to teach her?_

Who understands this work? No one! And no one ever will until the
natural genius for child culture of some women is improved by training,
strengthened and deepened by experience, and recognized as social
service. Such women should be mothers themselves, of course, They would
be too few, by the laws of specialization, to be hired as private
nurses, and too expensive, if they were not too few. The great
Specialist in Child Culture should be as highly honored and paid as a
college president--more so; no place on earth is more important.

The average mother is not, and never can be, an eminent specialist, any
more than the average father can be. Averages do not attain genius.
Our children need genius in their service. "Where are we to get it?"
demand the carpers and doubters, clinging to their rocky fastnesses of
tradition and habit like so many limpets.

It is here already.

Some women have a natural genius for the care and training of babies and
little children. Some women have a natural genius for household
management. All this wealth of genius is now lost to the world except
in so far as it is advantageous to one family.

And here, by a paradox not surprising, it io often disadvantageous. A
woman capable of smoothly administering a large hotel may be extremely
wearing as a private housekeeper. Napoleon, as a drill sergeant, would
have been hard to bear.

A woman with the real human love for children, the capacity for detail
in their management, the profound interest in educational processes,
which would make her a beneficent angel if she had the care of hundreds,
may make her a positive danger if she has to focus all that capacity on
two or three.

(To be concluded.)

PRISONERS

A MAN IN PRISON.

His cell is small.

His cell is dark.

His cell is cold.

His labor is monotonous and hard.

He is cut off from the light of day, from freedom of movement, from the
meeting of friends, from all amusement and pleasure and variety.

His hard labor is the least of his troubles--without it he could not
support life. What he most suffers from is the monotony--the
confinement--from being in prison.

He longs for his wife. He longs for his children. He longs for his
friends.

But first and last and always; highest and deepest and broadest, with
all his body and soul and mind he longs for Freedom!

A WOMAN IN PRISON.

Her cell is small.

Her cell is dark.

Her cell is cold.

Her labor is monotonous and hard.

She is cut off from the light of day, from freedom of movement, from the
meeting of friends, from all amusement and pleasure and variety.

Her hard labor is the least of her troubles--without it she could not
support life. What she most suffers from is the monotony--the
confinement--from being in prison.

She longs for her husband. She longs for her children. She longs for
her friends.

But first and last and always; highest and deepest and broadest, with
all her body and soul and mind she longs for Freedom!

THE MAN OF ALL WORK.

A man is doing all the housework of one family. He loves this family.
It is his family.

He loves his home.

He does not hate his work; but he does get tired of it.

He has to sleep at home all night, and he would prefer to go away from
it in the morning; to go out into the air; to join his friends; to go to
the shop, the office, the mill, the mine; to work with other men at more
varied tasks.

He loves his children; and wishes to do his duty as a father, but he has
them with him by night as well as by day; and even a father's patience
sometimes gives out. Also he has to do the housework. And even a
father, with all his love and strength cannot be a cook, a teacher, and
a nurse at the same time.

Sometimes the cooking suffers, but more often it is the teaching or
nursing or both--for his wife is rather exacting in the matter of food.

He has a kind wife and they are happy together.

He is proud of his children and they love him.

But when he was a young man he had a strange ambition--he wanted to Be
Somebody--to Do Something--to be independent, to take hold of the
world's work and help.

His children say, "We need you, Father--you cannot be spared--your duty
is here!"

His wife says, "I need you, Husband! You cannot be spared. I like to
feel that you are here with the children--keeping up our Home--your duty
is here."

And the Voice of the Priest, and the Voice of the Past and the Voice of
Common Prejudice all say:

"The duty of a father is to his children. The duty of a husband is to
his wife. Somebody must do the housework! Your duty is here!"

Yet the man is not satisfied.

THE WOMAN OF ALL WORK.

? ? ? ? ?

MAY LEAVES

My whole heart grieves
To feel the thrashing winds of March
On the young May leaves--
The cold dry dust winds of March
On the tender, fresh May leaves.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER VIII.

See, "Locked Inside," January No.

Behind the straight purple backs and smooth purple legs on the box
before them, Madam Weatherstone and Mrs. Weatherstone rolled home
silently, a silence of thunderous portent. Another purple person opened
the door for them, and when Madam Weatherstone said, "We will have tea
on the terrace," it was brought them by a fourth.

"I was astonished at your attitude, Viva," began the old lady, at
length. "Of course it was Mrs. Dankshire's fault in the first place,
but to encourage that,--outrageous person! How could you do it!"

Young Mrs. Weatherstone emptied her exquisite cup and set it down.

"A sudden access of courage, I suppose," she said. "I was astonished at
myself."

"I wholly disagree with you!" replied her mother-in-law. "Never in my
life have I heard such nonsense. Talk like that would be dangerous, if
it were not absurd! It would destroy the home! It would strike at the
roots of the family."

Viva eyed her quietly, trying to bear in mind the weight of a tradition,
the habits of a lifetime, the effect of long years of uninterrupted
worship of household gods.

"It doesn't seem so to me," she said slowly, "I was much interested and
impressed. She is evidently a young woman of knowledge and experience,
and put her case well. It has quite waked me up."

"It has quite upset you!" was the reply. "You'll be ill after this, I
am sure. Hadn't you better go and lie down now? I'll have some dinner
sent to you."

"Thank you," said Viva, rising and walking to the edge of the broad
terrace. "You are very kind. No. I do not wish to lie down. I
haven't felt so thoroughly awake in--" she drew a pink cluster of
oleander against her cheek and thought a moment--"in several years."
There was a new look about her certainly.

"Nervous excitement," her mother-in-law replied. "You're not like
yourself at all to-night. You'll certainly be ill to-morrow!"

Viva turned at this and again astonished the old lady by serenely
kissing her. "Not at all!" she said gaily. "I'm going to be well
to-morrow. You will see!"

She went to her room, drew a chair to the wide west window with the far
off view and sat herself down to think. Diantha's assured poise, her
clear reasoning, her courage, her common sense; and something of
tenderness and consecration she discerned also, had touched deep chords
in this woman's nature. It was like the sound of far doors opening,
windows thrown up, the jingle of bridles and clatter of hoofs, keen
bugle notes. A sense of hope, of power, of new enthusiasm, rose in her.

Orchardina Society, eagerly observing "young Mrs. Weatherstone" from her
first appearance, had always classified her as "delicate." Beside the
firm features and high color of the matron-in-office, this pale quiet
slender woman looked like a meek and transient visitor. But her white
forehead was broad under its soft-hanging eaves of hair, and her chin,
though lacking in prognathous prominence or bull-dog breadth, had a
certain depth which gave hope to the physiognomist.

She was strangely roused and stirred by the afternoon's events. "I'm
like that man in 'Phantastes'," she thought contemptuously, "who stayed
so long in that dungeon because it didn't occur to him to open the door!
Why don't I--?" she rose and walked slowly up and down, her hands
behind her. "I will!" she said at last.

Then she dressed for dinner, revolving in her mind certain suspicions
long suppressed, but now flaming out in clear conviction in the light of
Diantha's words. "Sleeping in, indeed!" she murmured to herself. "And
nobody doing anything!"

She looked herself in the eye in the long mirror. Her gown was an
impressive one, her hair coiled high, a gold band ringed it like a
crown. A clear red lit her checks.

She rang. Little Ilda, the newest maid, appeared, gazing at her in shy
admiration. Mrs. Weatherstone looked at her with new eyes. "Have you
been here long?" she asked. "What is your name?"

"No, ma'am," said the child--she was scarce more. "Only a week and two
days. My name is Ilda."

"Who engaged you?"

"Mrs. Halsey, ma'am."

"Ah," said Mrs. Weatherstone, musing to herself, "and I engaged Mrs.
Halsey!" "Do you like it here?" she continued kindly.

"Oh yes, ma'am!" said Ilda. "That is--" she stopped, blushed, and
continued bravely. "I like to work for you, ma'am."

"Thank you, Ilda. Will you ask Mrs. Halsey to come to me--at once,
please."

Ilda went, more impressed than ever with the desirability of her new
place, and mistress.

As she was about to pass the door of Mr. Matthew Weatherstone, that
young gentleman stepped out and intercepted her. "Whither away so fast,
my dear?" he amiably inquired.

"Please let one pass, sir! I'm on an errand. Please, sir?"

"You must give me a kiss first!" said he--and since there seemed no
escape and she was in haste, she submitted. He took six--and she ran
away half crying.

Mrs. Halsey, little accustomed to take orders from her real mistress,
and resting comfortably in her room, had half a mind to send an excuse.

"I'm not dressed," she said to the maid.

"Well she is!" replied Ilda, "dressed splendid. She said 'at once,
please.'"

"A pretty time o' day!" said the housekeeper with some asperity, hastily
buttoning her gown; and she presently appeared, somewhat heated, before
Mrs. Weatherstone.

That lady was sitting, cool and gracious, her long ivory paper-cutter
between the pages of a new magazine.

"In how short a time could you pack, Mrs. Halsey?" she inquired.

"Pack, ma'am? I'm not accustomed to doing packing. I'll send one of
the maids. Is it your things, ma'am?"

"No," said Mrs. Weatherstone. "It is yours I refer to. I wish you to
pack your things and leave the house--in an hour. One of the maids can
help you, if necessary. Anything you cannot take can be sent after you.
Here is a check for the following month's wages."

Mrs. Halsey was nearly a head taller than her employer, a stout showy
woman, handsome enough, red-lipped, and with a moist and crafty eye.
This was so sudden a misadventure that she forgot her usual caution.
"You've no right to turn me off in a minute like this!" she burst forth.
"I'll leave it to Madam Weatherstone!"

"If you will look at the terms on which I engaged you, Mrs. Halsey, you
will find that a month's warning, or a month's wages, was specified.
Here are the wages--as to the warning, that has been given for some
months past!"

"By whom, Ma'am?"

"By yourself, Mrs. Halsey--I think you understand me. Oscar will take
your things as soon as they are ready."

Mrs. Halsey met her steady eye a moment--saw more than she cared to
face--and left the room.

She took care, however, to carry some letters to Madam Weatherstone, and
meekly announced her discharge; also, by some coincidence, she met Mr.
Matthew in the hall upstairs, and weepingly confided her grievance to
him, meeting immediate consolation, both sentimental and practical.

When hurried servants were sent to find their young mistress they
reported that she must have gone out, and in truth she had; out on her
own roof, where she sat quite still, though shivering a little now and
then from the new excitement, until dinner time.

This meal, in the mind of Madam Weatherstone, was the crowning factor of
daily life; and, on state occasions, of social life. In her cosmogony
the central sun was a round mahogany table; all other details of
housekeeping revolved about it in varying orbits. To serve an endless
series of dignified delicious meals, notably dinners, was, in her eyes,
the chief end of woman; the most high purpose of the home.

Therefore, though angry and astounded, she appeared promptly when the
meal was announced; and when her daughter-in-law, serene and royally
attired, took her place as usual, no emotion was allowed to appear
before the purple footman who attended.

"I understood you were out, Viva," she said politely.

"I was," replied Viva, with equal decorum. "It is charming outside at
this time in the evening--don't you think so?"

Young Matthew was gloomy and irritable throughout the length and breadth
of the meal; and when they were left with their coffee in the drawing
room, he broke out, "What's this I hear about Mrs. Halsey being fired
without notice?"

"That is what I wish to know, Viva," said the grandmother. "The poor
woman is greatly distressed. Is there not some mistake?"

"It's a damn shame," said Matthew.

The younger lady glanced from one to the other, and wondered to see how
little she minded it. "The door was there all the time!" she thought to
herself, as she looked her stepson in the eye and said, "Hardly
drawing-room language, Matthew. Your grandmother is present!"

He stared at her in dumb amazement, so she went on, "No, there is no
mistake at all. I discharged Mrs. Halsey about an hour before dinner.
The terms of the engagement were a month's warning or a month's wages.
I gave her the wages."

"But! but!" Madam Weatherstone was genuinely confused by this sudden
inexplicable, yet perfectly polite piece of what she still felt to be in
the nature of 'interference' and 'presumption.' "I have had no fault to
find with her."

"I have, you see," said her daughter-in-law smiling. "I found her
unsatisfactory and shall replace her with something better presently.
How about a little music, Matthew? Won't you start the victrolla?"

Matthew wouldn't. He was going out; went out with the word. Madam
Weatherstone didn't wish to hear it--had a headache--must go to her
room--went to her room forthwith. There was a tension in the
athmosphere that would have wrung tears from Viva Weatherstone a week
ago, yes, twenty-four hours ago.

As it was she rose to her feet, stretching herself to her full height,
and walked the length of the great empty room. She even laughed a
little. "It's open!" said she, and ordered the car. While waiting for
it she chatted with Mrs. Porne awhile over the all-convenient telephone.

*

Diantha sat at her window, watching the big soft, brilliant moon behind
the eucalyptus trees. After the close of the strenuous meeting, she had
withdrawn from the crowd of excited women anxious to shake her hand and
engage her on the spot, had asked time to consider a number of good
opportunities offered, and had survived the cold and angry glances of
the now smaller but far more united Home and Culture Club. She declined
to talk to the reporters, and took refuge first in an open car. This
proved very unsatisfactory, owing to her sudden prominence. Two
persistent newspaper men swung themselves upon the car also and insisted
on addressing her.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," she said, "I am not acquainted with you."

They eagerly produced their cards--and said they were "newspaper men."

"I see," said Diantha, "But you are still men? And gentlemen, I
suppose? I am a woman, and I do not wish to talk with you."

"Miss Bell Declines to Be Interviewed," wrote the reporters, and spent
themselves on her personal appearance, being favorably impressed
thereby.

But Miss Bell got off at the next corner and took a short cut to the
house where she had rented a room. Reporters were waiting there, two
being women.

Diantha politely but firmly declined to see them and started for the
stairs; but they merely stood in front of her and asked questions. The
girl's blood surged to her cheeks; she smiled grimly, kept absolute
silence, brushed through them and went swiftly to her room, locking the
door after her.

The reporters described her appearance--unfavorably this time; and they
described the house--also unfavorably. They said that "A group of
adoring-eyed young men stood about the doorway as the flushed heroine of
the afternoon made her brusque entrance." These adorers consisted of
the landlady's Johnny, aged thirteen, and two satellites of his, still
younger. They _did_ look at Diantha admiringly; and she _was_ a little
hurried in her entrance--truth must be maintained.

Too irritated and tired to go out for dinner, she ate an orange or two,
lay down awhile, and then eased her mind by writing a long letter to
Ross and telling him all about it. That is, she told him most of it,
all the pleasant things, all the funny things; leaving out about the
reporters, because she was too angry to be just, she told herself. She
wrote and wrote, becoming peaceful as the quiet moments passed, and a
sense grew upon her of the strong, lasting love that was waiting so
patiently.

"Dearest," her swift pen flew along, "I really feel much encouraged. An
impression has been made. One or two men spoke to me afterward; the
young minister, who said such nice things; and one older man, who looked
prosperous and reliable. 'When you begin any such business as you have
outlined, you may count on me, Miss Bell,' he said, and gave me his
card. He's a lawyer--P. L. Wiscomb; nice man, I should think. Another
big, sheepish-looking man said, 'And me, Miss Bell.' His name is
Thaddler; his wife is very disagreeable. Some of the women are
favorably impressed, but the old-fashioned kind--my! 'If hate killed
men, Brother Lawrence!'--but it don't."

She wrote herself into a good humor, and dwelt at considerable length on
the pleasant episode of the minister and young Mrs. Weatherstone's
remarks. "I liked her," she wrote. "She's a nice woman--even if she is
rich."

There was a knock at her door. "Lady to see you, Miss."

"I cannot see anyone," said Diantha; "you must excuse me."

"Beg pardon, Miss, but it's not a reporter; it's--." The landlady
stretched her lean neck around the door edge and whispered hoarsely,
"It's young Mrs. Weatherstone!"

Diantha rose to her feet, a little bewildered. "I'll be right down,"
she said. But a voice broke in from the hall, "I beg your pardon, Miss
Bell, but I took the liberty of coming up; may I come in?"

She came in, and the landlady perforce went out. Mrs. Weatherstone held
Diantha's hand warmly, and looked into her eyes. "I was a schoolmate of
Ellen Porne," she told the girl. "We are dear friends still; and so I
feel that I know you better than you think. You have done beautiful
work for Mrs. Porne; now I want you to do to it for me. I need you."

"Won't you sit down?" said Diantha.

"You, too," said Mrs. Weatherstone. "Now I want you to come to
me--right away. You have done me so much good already. I was just a
New England bred school teacher myself at first, so we're even that far.
Then you took a step up--and I took a step down."

Diantha was a little slow in understanding the quick fervor of this new
friend; a trifle suspicious, even; being a cautious soul, and somewhat
overstrung, perhaps. Her visitor, bright-eyed and eager, went on. "I
gave up school teaching and married a fortune. You have given it up to
do a more needed work. I think you are wonderful. Now, I know this
seems queer to you, but I want to tell you about it. I feel sure you'll
understand. At home, Madam Weatherstone has had everything in charge
for years and years, and I've been too lazy or too weak, or too
indifferent, to do anything. I didn't care, somehow. All the machinery
of living, and no _living_--no good of it all! Yet there didn't seem to
be anything else to do. Now you have waked me all up--your paper this
afternoon--what Mr. Eltwood said--the way those poor, dull, blind women
took it. And yet I was just as dull and blind myself! Well, I begin to
see things now. I can't tell you all at once what a difference it has
made; but I have a very definite proposition to make to you. Will you
come and be my housekeeper, now--right away--at a hundred dollars a
month?"

Diantha opened her eyes wide and looked at the eager lady as if she
suspected her nervous balance.

"The other one got a thousand a year--you are worth more. Now, don't
decline, please. Let me tell you about it. I can see that you have
plans ahead, for this business; but it can't hurt you much to put them
off six months, say. Meantime, you could be practicing. Our place at
Santa Ulrica is almost as big as this one; there are lots of servants
and a great, weary maze of accounts to be kept, and it wouldn't be bad
practice for you--now, would it?"

Diantha's troubled eyes lit up. "No--you are right there," she said.
"If I could do it!"

"You'll have to do just that sort of thing when you are running your
business, won't you?" her visitor went on. "And the summer's not a good
time to start a thing like that, is it?"

Diantha meditated. "No, I wasn't going to. I was going to start
somewhere--take a cottage, a dozen girls or so--and furnish labor by the
day to the other cottages."

"Well, you might be able to run that on the side," said Mrs.
Weatherstone. "And you could train my girls, get in new ones if you
like; it doesn't seem to me it would conflict. But to speak to you
quite frankly, Miss Bell, I want you in the house for my own sake. You
do me good."

They discussed the matter for some time, Diantha objecting mainly to the
suddenness of it all. "I'm a slow thinker," she said, "and this is
so--so attractive that I'm suspicious of it. I had the other thing all
planned--the girls practically engaged."

"Where were you thinking of going?" asked Mrs. Weatherstone.

"To Santa Ulrica."

"Exactly! Well, you shall have your cottage and our girls and give them
part time. Or--how many have you arranged with?"

"Only six have made definite engagements yet."

"What kind?"

"Two laundresses, a cook and three second maids; all good ones."

"Excellent! Now, I tell you what to do. I will engage all those girls.
I'm making a change at the house, for various reasons. You bring them
to me as soon as you like; but you I want at once. I wish you'd come
home with me to-night! Why don't you?"

Diantha's scanty baggage was all in sight. She looked around for an
excuse. Mrs. Weatherstone stood up laughing.

"Put the new address in the letter," she said, mischievously, "and come
along!"

*

And the purple chauffeur, his disapproving back ineffectual in the
darkness, rolled them home.

THE ROOM AT THE TOP

There is room at the top?
Ah yes! Were you ever there?
Do you know what they bear
Whose struggle does not stop
Till they reach the room at the top?

Think you first of the way,
How long from the bottom round,--
From the safe, warm, common ground
In the light of the common day--
'Tis a long way. A dark way.

And think of the fight.
It is not so hard to stand
And strive off the broad free land;
But to climb in the wind and night,
And fight,--and climb,--and fight!

And the top when you enter in!
Ah! the fog! The frost! The dark!
And the hateful voices--hark!
O the comfort that you win!
Yes, there's room at the top. Come in!

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

VIII.

EDUCATION.

The origin of education is maternal. The mother animal is seen to teach
her young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whether
consciously done or not, this is education. In our human life,
education, even in its present state, is the most important process.
Without it we could not maintain ourselves, much less dominate and
improve conditions as we do; and when education is what it should be,
our power will increase far beyond present hopes.

In lower animals, speaking generally, the powers of the race must be
lodged in each individual. No gain of personal experience is of avail
to the others. No advantages remain, save those physically transmitted.
The narrow limits of personal gain and personal inheritance rigidly hem
in sub-human progress. With us, what one learns may be taught to the
others. Our life is social, collective. Our gain is for all, and
profits us in proportion as we extend it to all. As the human soul
develops in us, we become able to grasp more fully our common needs and
advantages; and with this growth has come the extension of education to
the people as a whole. Social functions are developed under natural
laws, like physical ones, and may be studied similarly.

In the evolution of this basic social function, what has been the effect
of wholly masculine influence?

The original process, instruction of individual child by individual
mother, has been largely neglected in our man-made world. That was
considered as a subsidiary sex-function of the woman, and as such, left
to her "instinct." This is the main reason why we show such great
progress in education for older children, and especially for youths, and
so little comparatively in that given to little ones.

We have had on the one side the natural current of maternal education,
with its first assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the
"dame-school"; and on the other the influence of the dominant class,
organized in university, college, and public school, slowly filtering
downward.

Educational forces are many. The child is born into certain conditions,
physical and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He grows up into social,
political and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. All
these conditions, so far, have been of androcentric character; but what
we call education as a special social process is what the child is
deliberately taught and subjected to; and it is here we may see the same
dominant influence so clearly.

This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girls
being left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew,
and no more. This very clear instance of the masculine theory is
glaring enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows how absolute was
the assumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone were to
be fitted for it. Women were no part of the world, and needed no
training for its uses. As females they were born and not made; as human
beings they were only servants, trained as such by their servant
mothers.

This system of education we are outgrowing more swiftly with each year.
The growing humanness of women, and its recognition, is forcing an equal
education for boy and girl. When this demand was first made, by women
of unusual calibre, and by men sufficiently human to overlook
sex-prejudice, how was it met? What was the attitude of woman's
"natural protector" when she began to ask some share in human life?

Under the universal assumption that men alone were humanity, that the
world was masculine and for men only, the efforts of the women were met
as a deliberate attempt to "unsex" themselves and become men. To be a
woman was to be ignorant, uneducated; to be wise, educated, was to be a
man. Women were not men, visibly; therefore they could not be educated,
and ought not to want to be.

Under this androcentric prejudice, the equal extension of education to
women was opposed at every step, and is still opposed by many. Seeing
in women only sex, and not humanness, they would confine her exclusively
to feminine interests. This is the masculine view, _par excellence_.
In spite of it, the human development of women, which so splendidly
characterizes our age, has gone on; and now both woman's colleges and
those for both sexes offer "the higher education" to our girls, as well
as the lower grades in school and kindergarten.

In the special professional training, the same opposition was
experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the
entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners
into a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them the
right hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as beginners,
and special courtesy as women.

The contrary occurred. Women were barred out, discriminated against,
taken advantage of, as competitors; and as women they have had to meet
special danger and offence instead of special courtesy. An
unforgettable instance of this lies in the attitude of the medical
colleges toward women students. The men, strong enough, one would
think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be
generous, opposed the newcomers first with absolute refusal; then, when
the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and
teachers met them not only with unkindness and unfairness, but with a
weapon ingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable--namely,
obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning
students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive
the women out--a most androcentric performance.

Remember that the essential masculine attitude is one of opposition, of
combat; his desire is obtained by first overcoming a competitor; and
then see how this dominant masculinity stands out where it has no
possible use or benefit--in the field of education. All along the line,
man, long master of a subject sex, fought every step of woman toward
mental equality. Nevertheless, since modern man has become human enough
to be just, he has at last let her have a share in the advantages of
education; and she has proven her full power to appreciate and use these
advantages.

Then to-day rises a new cry against "women in education." Here is Mr.
Barrett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claiming that teaching women
weakens the intellect of the teacher, and every now and then bursts out
a frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It
is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that
they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be
true that that is largely what women are for.

But the male assumes his influence to be normal, human, and the female
influence as wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where women teach boys,
the boys become "effeminate"--a grievous fall. When men teach girls, do
the girls become -----? Here again we lack the analogue. Never has it
occurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of such a thing as being
too masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that which
ever way the woman is placed, she is supposed to exert this degrading
influence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, she
effeminizes her teachers.

Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from the
androcentric habit of mind.

As a matter of sex, the female is the more important. Her share of the
processes which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be
feminine--if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and
dignified office than to be masculine--and nothing else.

But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present far
ahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, his
skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and
manages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as open to
the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our
androcentric culture.

But even if, in a purely human process, such as education, she does
bring her special feminine characteristics to bear, what are they, and
what are the results?

We can see the masculine influence everywhere still dominant and
superior. There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the reward
system, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Why
should I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?" with its
concomitant laziness, unwillingness to work without payment. There is
the second spur, Combat, the competitive system, which sets one against
another, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind,
but in getting ahead of one's fellows. Under these two wholly masculine
influences we have made the educational process a joy to the few who
successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely
attached, to all the others. This may be a good method in
sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous in
education. Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of this
noble social process.

What might we look for in a distinctly feminine influence? What are
these much-dreaded feminine characteristics?

The maternal ones, of course. The sex instincts of the male are of a
preliminary nature, leading merely to the union preceding parenthood.
The sex instincts of the female cover a far larger field, spending
themselves most fully in the lasting love, the ceaseless service, the
ingenuity and courage of efficient motherhood. To feminize education
would be to make it more motherly. The mother does not rear her
children by a system of prizes to be longed for and pursued; nor does
she set them to compete with one another, giving to the conquering child
what he needs, and to the vanquished, blame and deprivation. That would
be "unfeminine."

Motherhood does all it knows to give to each child what is most needed,
to teach all to their fullest capacity, to affectionately and
efficiently develop the whole of them.

But this is not what is meant by those who fear so much the influence of
women. Accustomed to a wholly male standard of living, to masculine
ideals, virtues, methods and conditions, they say--and say with some
justice--that feminine methods and ideals would be destructive to what
they call "manliness." For instance, education to-day is closely
interwoven with games and sports, all of an excessively masculine
nature. "The education of a boy is carried on largely on the
playground!" say the objectors to women teachers. Women cannot join
them there; therefore, they cannot educate them.

What games are these in which women cannot join? There are forms of
fighting, of course, violent and fierce, modern modifications of the
instinct of sex-combat. It is quite true that women are not adapted, or
inclined, to baseball or football or any violent game. They are
perfectly competent to take part in all normal athletic development, the
human range of agility and skill is open to them, as everyone knows who
has been to the circus; but they are not built for physical combat; nor
do they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing, hitting or kicking things.

But is it true that these strenuous games have the educational value
attributed to them? It seems like blasphemy to question it. The whole
range of male teachers, male pupils, male critics and spectators, are
loud in their admiration for the "manliness" developed by the craft,
courage, co-ordinative power and general "sportsmanship" developed by
the game of football, for instance; that a few young men are killed and
many maimed, is nothing in comparison to these advantages.

Let us review the threefold distinction on which this whole study rests,
between masculine, feminine and human. Grant that woman, being
feminine, cannot emulate man in being masculine--and does not want to.
Grant that the masculine qualities have their use and value, as well as
feminine ones. There still remain the human qualities shared by both,
owned by neither, most important of all. Education is a human process,
and should develop human qualities--not sex qualities. Surely our boys
are sufficiently masculine, without needing a special education to make
them more so.

The error lies here. A strictly masculine world, proud of its own sex
and despising the other, seeing nothing in the world but sex, either
male or female, has "viewed with alarm" the steady and rapid growth of
humanness. Here, for instance, is a boy visibly tending to be an
artist, a musician, a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy not
particularly clever in any line, nor ambitious for any special work,
though he means in a general way to "succeed"; he is, however, a big,
husky fellow, a good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and strong in the
virtues covered by the word "sportsmanship." This boy we call "a fine
manly fellow."

We are quite right. He is. He is distinctly and excessively male, at
the expense of his humanness. He may make a more prepotent sire than
the other, though even that is not certain; he may, and probably will,
appeal more strongly to the excessively feminine girl, who has even less
humanness than he; but he is not therefore a better citizen.

The advance of civilization calls for human qualities, in both men and
women. Our educational system is thwarted and hindered, not as Prof.
Wendell and his life would have us believe, by "feminization," but by an
overweening masculization.

Their position is a simple one. "We are men. Men are human beings.
Women are only women. This is a man's world. To get on in it you must
do it man-fashion--i.e., fight, and overcome the others. Being
civilized, in part, we must arrange a sort of "civilized warfare," and
learn to play the game, the old crude, fierce male game of combat, and
we must educate our boys thereto." No wonder education was denied to
women. No wonder their influence is dreaded by an ultra-masculine
culture.

It will change the system in time. It will gradually establish an equal
place in life for the feminine characteristics, so long belittled and
derided, and give pre-eminent dignity to the human power.

Physical culture, for both boys and girls, will be part of such a
modified system. All things that both can do together will be accepted
as human; but what either boys or girls have to retire apart to practice
will be frankly called masculine and feminine, and not encouraged in
children.

The most important qualities are the human ones, and will be so named
and honored. Courage is a human quality, not a sex-quality. What is
commonly called courage in male animals is mere belligerence, the
fighting instinct. To meet an adversary of his own sort is a universal
masculine trait; two father cats may fight fiercely each other, but both
will run from a dog as quickly as a mother cat. She has courage enough,
however, in defence of her kittens.

What this world most needs to-day in both men and women, is the power to
recognize our public conditions; to see the relative importance of
measures; to learn the processes of constructive citizenship. We need
an education which shall give its facts in the order of their
importance; morals and manners based on these facts; and train our
personal powers with careful selection, so that each may best serve the
community.

At present, in the larger processes of extra-scholastic education, the
advantage is still with the boy. From infancy we make the gross mistake
of accentuating sex in our children, by dress and all its limitations,
by special teaching of what is "ladylike" and "manly." The boy is
allowed a freedom of experience far beyond the girl. He learns more of
his town and city, more of machinery, more of life, passing on from
father to son the truths as well as traditions of sex superiority.

All this is changing before our eyes, with the advancing humanness of
women. Not yet, however, has their advance affected, to any large
extent, the base of all education; the experience of a child's first
years. Here is where the limitations of women have checked race
progress most thoroughly. Here hereditary influence was constantly
offset by the advance of the male. Social selection did develop higher
types of men, though sex-selection reversed still insisted on primitive
types of women. But the educative influence of these primitive women,
acting most exclusively on the most susceptible years of life, has been
a serious deterrent to race progress.

Here is the dominant male, largely humanized, yet still measuring life
from male standards. He sees women only as a sex. (Note here the
criticism of Europeans on American women. "Your women are so sexless!"
they say, meaning merely that our women have human qualities as well as
feminine.) And children he considers as part and parcel of the same
domain, both inferior classes, "women and children."

I recall in Rimmer's beautiful red chalk studies, certain profiles of
man, woman and child, and careful explanation that the proportion of the
woman's face and head were far more akin to the child than to the man.
What Mr. Rimmer should have shown, and could have, by profuse
illustration, was that the faces of boy and girl differ but slightly,
and the faces of old men and women differ as little, sometimes not at
all; while the face of the woman approximates the human more closely
than that of the man; while the child, representing race more than sex,
is naturally more akin to her than to him. The male reserves more
primitive qualities, the hairiness, the more pugnacious jaw; the female
is nearer to the higher human types.

An ultra-male selection has chosen women for their femininity first, and
next for qualities of submissiveness and patient service bred by long
ages of servility.

This servile womanhood, or the idler and more excessively feminine type,
has never appreciated the real power and place of the mother, and has
never been able to grasp or to carry out any worthy system of education
for little children. Any experienced teacher, man or woman, will own
how rare it is to find a mother capable of a dispassionate appreciation
of educative values. Books in infant education and child culture
generally are read by teachers more than mothers, so our public
libraries prove. The mother-instinct, quite suitable and sufficient in
animals, is by no means equal to the requirements of civilized life.
Animal motherhood furnishes a fresh wave of devotion for each new birth;
primitive human motherhood extends that passionate tenderness over the
growing family for a longer period; but neither can carry education
beyond its rudiments.

So accustomed are we to our world-old method of entrusting the first
years of the child to the action of untaught, unbridled mother-instinct,
that suggestions as to a better education for babies are received with
the frank derision of massed ignorance.

That powerful and brilliant writer, Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon, among
others has lent her able pen to ridicule and obstruct the gradual
awakening of human intelligence in mothers, the recognition that babies
are no exception to the rest of us in being better off for competent
care and service. It seems delightfully absurd to these reactionaries
that ages of human progress should be of any benefit to babies, save,
indeed, as their more human fathers, specialized and organized, are able
to provide them with better homes and a better world to grow up in. The
idea that mothers, more human, should specialize and organize as well,
and extend to their babies these supreme advantages, is made a laughing
stock.

It is easy and profitable to laugh with the majority; but in the
judgment of history, those who do so, hold unenviable positions. The
time is coming when the human mother will recognize the educative
possibilities of early childhood, learn that the ability to rightly
teach little children is rare and precious, and be proud and glad to
avail themselves of it.

We shall then see a development of the most valuable human qualities in
our children's minds such as would now seem wildly Utopian. We shall
learn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for the
steps of the unfolding mind, and train it, through carefully prearranged
experiences, to a power of judgment, of self-control, of social
perception, now utterly unthought of.

Such an education would begin at birth; yes, far before it, in the
standards of a conscious human motherhood. It would require a quite
different status of wifehood, womanhood, girlhood. It would be wholly
impossible if we were never to outgrow our androcentric culture.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

With the May issue of the American Magazine closes the first set of
papers on "The American Woman," by Miss Ida Tarbell. She has to a high
degree the historian's power to collate facts and so marshall them as to
give a clear picture of the time and scenes in question. I always read
her work with admiration and respect, also with enjoyment, personal and
professional. The strong, far-seeing mind at work; the direct style;
and the value of the subject matter, place this writer high among our
present day teachers.

For these reasons I was wholly unprepared for the painful shock caused
by reading the opening page in the March number of these articles.
Preceding issues had treated of the rise of the Equal Suffrage movement
in this country; while not wholly sympathetic, these were fair, and ably
treated.

The March number begins: "What was the American Woman doing in the '40's
and '50's that she went on her way so serenely while a few of her sex
struggled and suffered to gain for her what they believed to be her
rights?" And she goes on to show for what reason she kept out of the
Woman's Rights Movement, "reasons, on the whole, simple and noble."

Here are the reasons.

"She was too much occupied with preserving and developing the great
traditions of life she had inherited and accepted. . . . She was firmly
convinced that these traditions were the best the world had so far
developed, not merely for women, but for society. She did not deny that
women had not the full opportunity they should have; but as she saw it,
no more did men. She saw civil and educational and social changes going
on about her. She feared their coming too fast rather than too slow.

"And it was no unworthy thing that she was doing. Take that part of her
life so often spoken of with contempt--her social life. Those who would
pass society by as a frivolous and unworthy institution are those who
have never learned its real functions--who confuse the selfish business
of amusement with the serious task of providing _an intimate circle for
the free exchange of ideals and of service,_ for stimulus and enjoyment.

"It is through society that _the quickening of mind and heart best comes
about--that the nature is aroused, the fancy heightened. It is the very
foundation of civilization--society. The church and state work through
it. Morals are made and unmade in it. Ideas find life or death
there."_

The italics are mine.

For so clear-headed a woman as Miss Tarbell to commit herself to
statements like these was a keen disappointment to a sincere admirer. I
have quoted at length that there may be no mistake as to her meaning.
The "society" referred to is unmistakably that business of exchanging
entertainments which most of us do pass by as "a frivolous and unworthy
institution;" but which some find the sufficient occupation of a
lifetime.

That human intercourse is profoundly important no one will deny; we know
that contact and exchange does quicken the mind and heart, does give
stimulus and enjoyment. It is even true in a large sociological sense
that human intercourse is the foundation of civilization. But to call
"society" the foundation of civilization does seem like putting a very
long train of carts before the horse.

Women who work for suffrage, like other women, and men also, need to
meet other people, need relaxation, need the stimulus of contact with
differing minds, and get it. Being a suffragist is not like being a
leper--or a pauper--or excommunicated. There is nothing about the
belief itself to cut off the believer from her kind, and make it
impossible to invite her to dinner.

"Society" is of course averse to meeting persons who talk seriously of
important things. We are all taught as children that religion and
politics must not be discussed in society--and the cause of woman
suffrage is often both.

"The selfish business of amusement" is so predominant in "society" that
amusing people are the preferred guests; and if some earnest and
noteworthy person is drawn into "society" as a temporary exhibit, he is
expected to be amusing if he can, and not talk "shop."

It may be admitted at once that Miss Tarbell's main contention is true.
It was of course because most women were so occupied in "preserving and
developing the great traditions of life" that they could not open their
minds to new convictions. They were of course suspicious of change, so
is the mass of people at all times, in proportion to their ignorance.
The deadening effect of a ceaseless round of housework keeps most women
from grasping general issues of importance; and the deadening effect of
a ceaseless round of entertainments does the same thing to the few who
represent "society." But to have that "society" presented to us as a
noble soul-satisfying rightfully exclusive occupation, is a shock.

If it is a natural, simple right form of meeting together it is in no
way forbidding to woman suffragists. If it is the "round of gaieties"
to which our newspapers give columns--how does it accomplish all those
invaluable achievements Miss Tarbell enumerates?

What are the occupations of "society?" Its members are always getting
together in expensive clothes, to visit and receive, to eat and drink,
to ride and drive, to dance and play games, to go to the opera; and to
travel from town to country, from beach to mountain, from land to land,
to repeat these things or to hire some one to invent new ones. But
these pleasures cannot be in themselves the foundation of civilization!
The "exchange of ideals and service" alleged to take place in "society"
must be in conversation! It is by this medium that we get our minds and
hearts quickened--our natures aroused--our fancy heightened--that the
ideas find life and death, and morals are made and unmade.

During which process of "society" does the conversation which promotes
the exchange of ideals and service best come about? Is it in the talk
of women who are "paying calls?" Is it in the talk at a "tea" or
reception? Is it in the talk at a luncheon or a dinner? Is it in the
talk over the card-table, or while dancing? Is it in talk at the
horse-show or opera? (The pressure of ideas in society is so great that
its members do converse at the opera.)

Surely it cannot be "society" which Miss Tarbell means! She must mean
human intercourse--the meeting of congenial minds. But no; that is open
to the suffragist as well as to any; and no one ever called it a
frivolous and unworthy institution.

The meaning is clear enough, but the claims made are to say the least
unconvincing.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

My own, partly personal and partly professional.

Q. Why don't people send questions to this department?

A. 1. Because it does not interest them.

A. 2. Because they have no problems.

A. 3. Because they see no reason to expect satisfactory answers.

A. 4. Because they do not understand that questions are asked for.

Now if any of the first three answers are correct, there is nothing to
be said--and no use for this department.

But if its the last--herein it is stated that the purpose of this
department is to seriously discuss real "personal problems" such as do
arise in most lives; and to which neither the minister nor Ruth Ashmore
do justice.

It is not proposed to furnish absolute wisdom; only comparative.

One question was considered in the January issue; and a very earnest
letter of inquiry was answered at great length for this number but
proved too long--will appear in July.

What has always been a problem to me is how people can be alive and take
so little interest in the performance.

Here is Life--Death--and a discussable Immortality. Here is Love--of
all kinds and sizes. Here is Happiness--so big that you can't swallow
it; and Pain--an unlimited assortment.

Here are Things Going On--all kinds of things.

And here are we--making button holes in the back parlor--breaking our
heads in a sham fight in the back yard!

Question. Why don't people wake up and LIVE! World-size?

Answer ..........................

Some of you send an answer!

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THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

_What is The Forerunner?_ It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories
short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon;
dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

_What is it For?_ It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage
and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice
the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to
make.

_What is it about?_ It is about people, principles, and the questions
of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives
a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

_Is it a Woman's magazine?_ It will treat all three phases of our
existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true
place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important
citizen.

_Is it a Socialist Magazine?_ It is a magazine for humanity, and
humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is
part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious
humanity is to promote Socialization.

_Why is it published?_ It is published to express ideas which need a
special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons
interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser."
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AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a
new name:--

_"Our Androcentric Culture."_ this is a study of the historic effect on
normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization.
It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the
more human, may do to change it.

_"What Diantha Did."_ This is a serial novel. It shows the course of
true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the
obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves
that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality."
"The Beauty Women Have Lost"
"Our Overworked Instincts."
"The Nun in the Kitchen."
"Genius: Domestic and Maternal."
"A Small God and a Large Goddess."
"Animals in Cities."
"How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money."
"Prize Children"
"Kitchen-Mindedness"
"Parlor-Mindedness"
"Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue.
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answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

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Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
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THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

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Volume 1. No. 9
JULY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Genus Homo is superior to all other animal species.
Granted. The superiority is due to some things--and in spite of others.

THE BAWLING WORLD

A SESTINA.

Be not impatient with the bawling world!--
The clatter of wild newsmongers, the cry
Of those in pulpits, the incessant speech
From many platforms, and the various prayers
Of tale-tellers all striving for our ears,
And poets that wait and gibber--they have cause.

For all this noise there is a natural cause,
Most natural of all that move the world,
The one that first assails a mother's ears
When loud a lusty infant learns to cry,
An inarticulate insistent prayer
But serving that first need as well as speech.

Reason and love combine to give us speech,
But this loud outcry has a simpler cause,
The same that prompts the roaming jackal's prayer
And fills the forests of the untamed world
With one long, jarring hungry piteous cry--
Such cry as still attacks our weary ears.

We long for human music in our ears,
For the clear joy of well-considered speech,
And the true poet's soul-uplifting cry
To lead us forward, striving for the cause
Of liberty and light for all the world--
And hear but this confused insensate prayer.

Vainly we seek to fly this ceaseless prayer--
To find some silent spot--to stop our ears:--
There is no place in all the groaning world
Where we can live apart from human speech:
and we, while speech is governed by this cause,
Are infants "with no language but a cry."

It is for food that all live creatures cry,
For food the sparrow's or the lion's prayer,
And need of food is the continuing cause,
Of all this deafening tumult in our ears.
Had we our food secure--! Then human speech
Might make mild music, and a wiser world!

*

Poor hungry world! No wonder that you cry;
Elaborate speech reduced to primal prayer:
To save our ears let us remove the cause!

A COINCIDENCE

"O that! It was a fortunate coincidence, wasn't it? All things work
together for good with those who love the Lord, you know, and Emma
Ordway is the most outrageously Christian woman I ever knew. It did
look that Autumn as if there was no way out of it, but things do happen,
sometimes.

I dropped in rather late one afternoon to have a cup of tea with Emma,
hoping against hope that Mirabella Vlack wouldn't be on hand; but she
was, of course, and gobbling. There never was such a woman for candy
and all manner of sweet stuff. I can remember her at school, with those
large innocent eyes, and that wide mouth, eating Emma's nicest tidbits
even then.

Emma loves sweets but she loves her friends better, and never gets
anything for herself unless there is more than enough for everybody.
She is very fond of a particular kind of fudge I make, has been fond of
it for thirty years, and I love to make it for her once in a while, but
after Mirabella came--I might as well have made it for her to begin
with.

I devised the idea of bringing it in separate boxes, one for each, but
bless you! Mirabella kept hers in her room, and ate Emma's!

"O I've left mine up stairs!" she'd say; "Let me go up and get it;"--and
of course Emma wouldn't hear of such a thing. Trust Emma!

I've loved that girl ever since she was a girl, in spite of her
preternatural unselfishness. And I've always hated those Vlack girls,
both of them, Mirabella the most. At least I think so when I'm with
her. When I'm with Arabella I'm not so sure. She married a man named
Sibthorpe, just rich.

They were both there that afternoon, the Vlack girls I mean, and
disagreeing as usual. Arabella was lean and hard and rigorously well
dressed, she meant to have her way in this world and generally got it.
Mirabella was thick and soft. Her face was draped puffily upon its
unseen bones, and of an unwholesome color because of indigestion. She
was the type that suggests cushioned upholstery, whereas Arabella's
construction was evident.

"You don't look well, Mirabella," said she.

"I am well," replied her sister, "Quite well I assure you."

Mirabella was at that time some kind of a holy thoughtist. She had
tried every variety of doctor, keeping them only as long as they did not
charge too much, and let her eat what she pleased; which necessitated
frequent change.

Mrs. Montrose smiled diplomatically, remarking "What a comfort these
wonderful new faiths are!" She was one of Emma's old friends, and was
urging her to go out to California with them and spend the winter. She
dilated on the heavenly beauty and sweetness of the place till it almost
made my mouth water, and Emma!--she loved travel better than anything,
and California was one of the few places she had not seen.

Then that Vlack girl began to perform. "Why don't you go, Emma?" she
said. "I'm not able to travel myself," (she wouldn't admit she was
pointedly left out), "but that's no reason you should miss such a
delightful opportunity. I can be housekeeper for you in your absence."
This proposition had been tried once. All Emma's old servants left, and
she had to come back in the middle of her trip, and re-organize the
household.

Thus Mirabella, looking saintly and cheerful. And Emma--I could have
shaken her soundly where she sat--Emma smiled bravely at Mrs. Montrose
and thanked her warmly; she'd love it above all things, but there were
many reasons why she couldn't leave home that winter. And we both knew
there was only one, a huge thing in petticoats sitting gobbling there.

One or two other old friends dropped in, but they didn't stay long; they
never did any more, and hardly any men came now. As I sat there
drinking my pale tea I heard these people asking Emma why she didn't do
this any more, and why she didn't come to that any more, and Emma just
as dignified and nice as you please, telling all sorts of perforated
paper fibs to explain and decline. One can't be perfect, and nobody
could be as absolutely kind and gracious and universally beloved as Emma
if she always told the plain truth.

I'd brought in my last protege that day, Dr. Lucy Barnes, a small quaint
person, with more knowledge of her profession than her looks would
indicate. She was a very wise little creature altogether. I had been
studying chemistry with her, just for fun. You never know when yon may
want to know a thing.

It was fine to see Dr. Lucy put her finger on Mirabella's weakness.

There that great cuckoo sat and discoursed on the symptoms she used to
have, and would have now if it wasn't for "science"; and there I sat and
watched Emma, and I declare she seemed to age visibly before my eyes.

Was I to keep quiet and let one of the nicest women that ever breathed
be worn into her grave by that--Incubus? Even if she hadn't been a
friend of mine, even if she hadn't been too good for this world, it
would have been a shame. As it was the outrage cried to heaven.--and
nobody could do anything.

Here was Emma, a widow, and in her own house; you couldn't coerce her.
And she could afford it, as far as money went, you couldn't interfere
that way. She had been so happy! She'd got over being a widow--I mean
got used to it, and was finding her own feet. Her children were all
married and reasonably happy, except the youngest, who was unreasonably
happy; but time would make that all right. The Emma really began to
enjoy life. Her health was good; she'd kept her looks wonderfully; and
all the vivid interests of her girlhood cropped up again. She began to
study things; to go to lectures and courses of lectures; to travel every
year to a new place; to see her old friends and make new ones. She
never liked to keep house, but Emma was so idiotically unselfish that
she never would enjoy herself as long as there was anybody at home to
give up to.

And then came Mirabella Vlack.

She came for a visit, at least she called one day with her air of
saintly patience, and a miserable story of her loneliness and
unhappiness, and how she couldn't bear to be dependent on
Arabella--Arabella was so unsympathetic!--and that misguided Emma
invited her to visit her for awhile.

That was five years ago. Five years! And here she sat, gobbling, forty
pounds fatter and the soul of amiability, while Emma grew old.

Of course we all remonstrated--after it was too late.

Emma had a right to her own visitors--nobody ever dreamed that the thing
was permanent, and nobody could break down that adamantine wall of
Christian virtue she suffered behind, not owning that she suffered.

It was a problem.

But I love problems, human problems, better even than problems in
chemistry, and they are fascinating enough.

First I tried Arabella. She said she regretted that poor Mirabella
would not come to her loving arms. You see Mirabella had tried them,
for about a year after her husband died, and preferred Emma's.

"It really doesn't look well," said Arabella. "Here am I alone in these
great halls, and there is my only sister preferring to live with a
comparative stranger! Her duty is to live with me, where I can take
care of her."

Not much progress here. Mirabella did not want to be taken care of by a
fault-finding older sister--not while Emma was in reach. It paid, too.
Her insurance money kept her in clothes, and she could save a good deal,
having no living expenses. As long as she preferred living with Emma
Ordway, and Emma let her--what could anybody do?

It was getting well along in November, miserable weather.

Emma had a cough that hung on for weeks and weeks, she couldn't seem to
gather herself together and throw it off, and Mirabella all the time
assuring her that she had no cough at all!

Certain things began to seem very clear to me.

One was the duty of a sister, of two sisters. One was the need of a
change of climate for my Emma.

One was that ever opening field of human possibilities which it has been
the increasing joy of my lifetime to study.

I carried two boxes of my delectable fudge to those ladies quite
regularly, a plain white one for Emma, a pretty colored one for the
Incubus.

"Are you sure it is good for you?" I asked Mirabella; "I love to make it
and have it appreciated, but does your Doctor think it is good for you?"

Strong in her latest faith she proudly declared she could eat anything.
She could--visibly. So she took me up short on this point, and ate
several to demonstrate immunity--out of Emma's box.

Nevertheless, in spite of all demonstration she seemed to grow
somewhat--queasy--shall we say? --and drove poor Emma almost to tears
trying to please her in the matter of meals.

Then I began to take them both out to ride in my motor, and to call
quite frequently on Arabella; they couldn't well help it, you see, when
I stopped the car and hopped out. "Mrs. Sibthorpe's sister" I'd always
say to the butler or maid, and she'd always act as if she owned the
house--that is if Arabella was out.

Then I had a good talk with Emma's old doctor, and he quite frightened
her.

"You ought to close up the house," he said, "and spend the winter in a
warm climate. You need complete rest and change, for a long time, a
year at least," he told her. I urged her to go.

"Do make a change," I begged. "Here's Mrs. Sibthorpe perfectly willing
to keep Mirabella--she'd be just as well off there; and you do really
need a rest."

Emma smiled that saintly smile of hers, and said, "Of course, if
Mirabella would go to her sister's awhile I could leave? But I can't
ask her to go."

I could. I did. I put it to her fair and square,--the state of Emma's
health, her real need to break up housekeeping, and how Arabella was
just waiting for her to come there. But what's the use of talking to
that kind? Emma wasn't sick, couldn't be sick, nobody could. At that
very moment she paused suddenly, laid a fat hand on a fat side with an
expression that certainly looked like pain; but she changed it for one
of lofty and determined faith, and seemed to feel better. It made her
cross though, as near it as she ever gets. She'd have been rude I
think, but she likes my motor, to say nothing of my fudge.

I took them both out to ride that very afternoon, and Dr. Lucy with us.

Emma, foolish thing, insisted on sitting with the driver, and Mirabella
made for her pet corner at once. I put Dr. Lucy in the middle, and
encouraged Mirabella in her favorite backsliding, the discussion of her
symptoms--the symptoms she used to have--or would have now if she gave
way to "error."

Dr. Lucy was ingeniously sympathetic. She made no pretence of taking up
the new view, but was perfectly polite about it.

"Judging from what you tell me", she said, "and from my own point of
view, I should say that you had a quite serious digestive trouble; that
you had a good deal of pain now and then; and were quite likely to have
a sudden and perhaps serious attack. But that is all nonsense to you I
suppose."

"Of course it is!" said Mirabella, turning a shade paler.

We were running smoothly down the to avenue where Arabella lived.

"Here's something to cheer you up," I said, producing my two boxes of
fudge. One I passed around in front to Emma; she couldn't share it with
us. The other I gave Mirabella.

She fell upon it at once; perfunctorily offering some to Dr. Lucy, who
declined; and to me. I took one for politeness's sake, and casually put
it in my pocket.

We had just about reached Mrs. Sibthorpe's gate when Mirabella gave in.

"Oh I have such a terrible pain!" said she. "Oh Dr. Lucy! What shall I
do?"

"Shall I take you down to your healer?" I suggested; but Mirabella was
feeling very badly indeed.

"I think I'd better go in here a moment," she said; and in five minutes
we had her in bed in what used to be her room.

Dr. Lucy seemed averse to prescribe.

"I have no right to interfere with your faith, Mrs. Vlack," she said.
"I have medicines which I think would relieve you, but you do not
believe in them. I think you should summon your--practitioner, at
once."

"Oh Dr. Lucy!" gasped poor Mirabella, whose aspect was that of a small
boy in an August orchard. "Don't leave me! Oh do something for me
quick!"

"Will you do just what I say?"

"I will! I will; I'll do _anything_!" said Mirabella, curling up in as
small a heap as was possible to her proportions, and Dr. Lucy took the
case.

We waited in the big bald parlors till she came down to tell us what was
wrong. Emma seemed very anxious, but then Emma is a preternatural
saint.

Arabella came home and made a great todo. "So fortunate that she was
near my door!" she said. "Oh my poor sister! I am so glad she has a
real doctor!"

The real doctor came down after a while. "She is practically out of
pain," she said, "and resting quietly. But she is extremely weak, and
ought not to be moved for a long time."

"She shall not be!" said Arabella fervently. "My own sister! I am so
thankful she came to me in her hour of need!"

I took Emma away. "Let's pick up Mrs. Montrose," I said. "She's tired
out with packing--the air will do her good."

She was glad to come. We all sat back comfortably in the big seat and
had a fine ride; and then Mrs. Montrose had us both come in and take
dinner with her. Emma ate better than I'd seen her in months, and
before she went home it was settled that she leave with Mrs. Montrose on
Tuesday.

Dear Emma! She was as pleased as a child. I ran about with her, doing
a little shopping. "Don't bother with anything," I said, "You can get
things out there. Maybe you'll go on to Japan next spring with the
James's."

"If we could sell the house I would!" said Emma. She brisked and
sparkled--the years fell off from her--she started off looking fairly
girlish in her hope and enthusiasm.

I drew a long sigh of relief.

Mr. MacAvelly has some real estate interests.

The house was sold before Mirabella was out of bed.

SHARES

To those who in leisure may meet
Comes Summer, green, fragrant and fair,
With roses and stars in her hair;
Summer, as motherhood sweet.
To us, in the waste of the street,
No Summer, only--The Heat!

To those of the fortunate fold
Comes Winter, snow-clean and ice-bright,
With joy for the day and the night,
Winter, as fatherhood bold.
To us, without silver or gold,
No Winter, only--The Cold!

GENIUS, DOMESTIC AND MATERNAL. II.

Consider the mighty influence of Dr. Arnold, of Emma Willard; and think
of that all lost to the world, and concentrated relentlessly on a few
little Arnolds and Willards alone!

The children of such genius can healthfully share in its benefits but
not healthily monopolize them.

Our appreciation of this study is hampered by the limitation of little
exercised minds. Most of us accept things as they are--cannot easily
imagine them different, and fear any change as evil.

There was a time when there wasn't a school or a schoolhouse on earth;
people may yet be found who see no need of them. To build places for
children to spend part of the day in--away from their mothers--and be
cared for by specialists!--Horrible!

The same feeling meets us now when it is suggested that places should be
built for the babies to spend part of the day in--away from their
mothers--and be cared for by specialists!--Horrible! Up hops in every
mind those twin bugaboos, the Infant Hospital and the Orphan Asylum.
That is all the average mind can think of as an "institution" for
babies.

Think of the kindergarten. Think of the day-nursery. Multiply and
magnify these a thousand fold; make them beautiful, comfortable,
hygienic, safe and sweet and near--one for every twenty or thirty
families perhaps; and put in each, not a casual young kindergarten
apprentice or hired nurse; but Genius, Training and Experience. Then
you can "teach the mothers," for at last there can be gathered a body of
facts, real knowledge, on the subject of child culture; and it can take
its place in modern progress.

Every mother whose baby spent its day hours in such care would take home
new knowledge and new standards to aid her there; and the one mother out
of twenty or thirty who cared most about it would be in that baby house
herself--she is the Genius. Not anybody's hired "nursemaid," but a
nurse-mother, a teacher-mother, a Human Mother at last.

The same opening confronts us when we squirm so helplessly in what we
call "the domestic problem." That problem is "How can every woman carry
on the same trade equally well?"

Answer--She can't.

All women do not like to "keep house;" and there is no reason why all
men, and all children, as well as the women, should suffer in health,
comfort and peace of mind under their mal-administration. We need the
Expert, the Specialist, the Genius, here too.

Thousands of discontented women are doing very imperfectly what hundreds
could do well and enjoy.

Thousands of men are paying unnecessary bills, eating what we may
politely call "unnecessary food," and putting up with the discontented
woman. Thousands of children are growing up as best they can under
inexpert mothers and inexpert housekeepers. Thousands of unnecessary
deaths, invalids, and miserable lives; millions and millions of dollars
wasted; and all this for the simple lack of society's first
law--Specialization.

Here are all these unspecialized housekeepers wriggling miserably with
their unspecialized servants; and others--the vast majority,
remember--"doing their own work" in a crude and ineffectual manner; and
there is not even a standard whereby to judge our shortcomings! We have
never known anything better, and the average mind cannot imagine
anything better than it has ever known.

(When we have expert Childculture, we shall cultivate the imagination!)

"Do you want us to give up our homes?" cries the Average Mind. "Must we
live in hotels, eat in restaurants?"

No, dear Average Mind.

Every family should have its own home; and it ought to be a real home,
with a real garden. Among the homes and gardens should stand the
baby-house with its baby-gardens; and quite apart from these fair homes
should stand the Workshops. The Cleaning Establishment, the
Laundry--the Cookshop; the Service Bureau; each and all in charge of its
Genius--its special person who likes that kind of work and does it well.

The home, quiet, sweet and kitchenless, will be visited by swift skilled
cleaners to keep it up to the highest sanitary standards; the dishes
will come in filled with fresh, hot food, and go out in the same
receptacle, for proper cleansing; the whole labor of "housekeeping" will
be removed from the home, and the woman will begin to enjoy it as a man
does. The man also will enjoy it more. It will be cleaner, quieter,
more sanitary, more beautiful and comfortable, and far less expensive.

And what of the average woman?

She will cease to exist. She will become specialized as every civilized
person must be. She will not be a woman less, but a human being more.
And in these special lines of genius, domestic and maternal, she will
lift the whole world forward with amazing speed. The health, the
brain-power, the peace of mind, of all our citizens will be increased by
the work of the Mother-Genius and maintained by the Domestic Genius.

Have you never known one of those born mothers, with perhaps some
training as a kindergartner added; who loves to be with children and
whom children love to be with? She is healthy and happy in her work,
and the children she cares for grow up with fewer tears, with better
constitutions, with strong young hearts and clear brains to meet life's
problems.

Have you never compared such a mother and such children with those we
see commonly about us? The mother, nervous, irritable, unfit for her
work and not happy in it; a discontented person, her energies both
exhausted and unused. What she wastes in uncongenial effort she might
spend joyfully in work she was fit for.

Have you never seen the sullen misery, the horrible impotent rage, the
fretful unhappiness of mishandled children? Not orphans; and not
"neglected"; not physically starved or beaten; but treated with such
brutal clumsiness that their childhood is clouded and their whole lives
embittered and weakened by the experience?

Are we so blinded by the beautiful ideal of motherhood as it should be,
that we continually overlook the limitations of motherhood as it is?

Again have you not seen the home of homes; where the cleanliness is
perfect, the quiet and harmony a joy to the soul; where beauty and peace
are linked with economy and wisdom? There are such--but they are not
common.

As in the other case, our ideals blind us to the facts. Most homes are
sadly imperfect; enjoyed by their inmates because they are used to
them--and have known no better. What we have so far failed to see is
humanity's right to the best; in these departments of life, as well as
others.

As we live now, the ever-growing weight of our just demands for a higher
order of home falling on the ever more inadequate shoulders of the
Average Woman, both Motherhood and the home are imperilled. We are
horribly frightened when we see our poor Average Woman shrink from
maternity, and [illegible] at housework. We preach at her and scold her
and flatter her and woo her, and, if we could, we would force her back
into her old place, child-bearer and burden-hearer, the helpless servant
of the world.

All this terror is wasted. It is not child-bearing--within reason--that
the girl of to-day so dreads. It is the life-long task of
child-rearing, for which she begins at last to realize she is unfit. An
utterly ignorant woman has no such terror, she bears profusely, rears as
she can, and buries as she must. Better one well-born and well-trained,
than the incapable six survivors of the unnecessary twelve.

It is not home-life that our girls shrink from; men and women alike, we
love and need a home; it is the housework, and the house management,
which are no more alluring to a rational woman than to a rational man.
"I love ocean travel," says Mrs. Porne, "but that's no reason I should
wish to be either a captain or a stoker!"

Why not respect this new attitude of our women; study it, try to
understand it; see if there is not some reason for it--and some way to
change conditions.

Suppose a young woman stands, happy and successful, in her chosen
profession. Suppose a young man offers her marriage. Suppose that this
meant to her all that life held before--plus Love! Plus a Home
Together! Plus Children! Children they both would love, both would
provide for, both would work for; but to whom neither would be a living
sacrifice--and an ineffectual sacrifice at that.

Children are not improved in proportion to their mother's immolation.
The father's love, the mother's love, the sheltering care of both, and
all due association, they need, but in the detailed services and
education of their lives, they need Genius.

And the Home--that should mean to her precisely what it means to him.
Peace, comfort, joy and pride; seclusion; mutual companionship; rest,
beautiful privacy and rest--not a workshop.

What we need in this matter is not noisy objurgations and adjurations on
the part of men; and not the reluctant submission, or angry refusal, of
women--forced to take so much needless bitter with life's sweetest joy;
but a rational facing of the question by the women themselves. It is
their business--as much so as the most obdurate mossback can
protest--but collectively, not individually.

Let them collect then! Let them organize and specialize--the two go
together. Let them develop Genius--and use it; heaven knows it is
needed!

IMPROVED METHODS OF HABIT CULTURE

Most of us recognize that common force, "the power of habit." Most of
us have been rigorously, often painfully, almost always annoyingly,
trained into what our parents and guardians considered good habits.
Most of us know something of the insidious nature of "bad habits"--how
easily they slip in, how hard they are to eject.

But few of us know the distinct pleasure of voluntary habit culture, by
modern methods.

ln my youth an improving book was prepared for children concerning a
Peasant and a Camel. The Peasant was depicted as having a Hut, and a
Fireside, and as loafing lazily in its warm glow. Then, in the crack of
the door, appeared the appealing nose of a Camel--might he warm that
nose? The lazy Peasant wouldn't take the trouble to get up and shut him
out. The appealing nose became an insinuating neck, then intrusive
shoulders, and presently we have a whole camel lying by the fire, and
the peasant, now alarmed and enraged, vainly belaboring the tough hind
quarters of the huge beast which lay in his place.

I was a child of a painfully logical mind, and this story failed of its
due effect on me because of certain discrepancies. A. Peasants (in my
limited reading) belonged with asses and oxen--not with Camels. Camels
had Arab companions--Bedouins--turbaned Blacks--not Peasants. I did not
understand the intrusion of this solitary camel into a peasant country.
B. Why should the Camel want to come into the hut? Camels are not
house-beasts, surely. And to lie by the fire;--cats and dogs like
firesides, and crickets, but in my pictures of the Ship of the Desert I
never had seen this overmastering desire to get warm. And if it was in
sooth a cold country--then in the name of all nursery reasonableness,
how came the camel there?

Furthermore, if he was a stray camel, a camel escaped from a circus and
seeking the only human companionship he could discover,--in that case
such an unusual apparition would have scared the laziest of Peasants
into prompt resistance. Moreove